“The Yellow Sign” was first published in the collection THE KING IN YELLOW in 1895.

Longtime listeners or backers of our Pseudopod 10 Year anniversary will be familiar with the artistic work and madcap visions of Jonathan Chaffin of Horror In Clay. He makes fine horror-themed tiki mugs, art, and ephemera. He made a Cthulhu tiki mug, before that was a thing, and a cask of Amontillado and an Innsmouth Fogcutter. Now, he has a warning for you. Somewhere in the infinite multiverse, or just on the other side of this shadow, the King In Yellow awaits. “The Pallid Mask” from Horror In Clay is a 8in tiki mug inspired by love for the linked short stories of Robert W. Chambers, and every subsequent writer caught by that fateful play.

The mug is available on Kickstarter, and will ship in August. The mug is part of a collection with companion pieces like a custom-written D6 tabletop RPG module and a Mai Tai glass from the mythic “Shores of Carcosa” restaurant. Learn more on Kickstarter by searching for “Pallid Mask” or at Horror In Clay.

The Yellow Sign

by Robert W. Chambers

“Let the red dawn surmise
What we shall do,
When this blue starlight dies
And all is through.”

I

There are so many things which are impossible to explain! Why should certain chords in music make me think of the brown and golden tints of autumn foliage? Why should the Mass of Sainte Cécile bend my thoughts wandering among caverns whose walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin silver? What was it in the roar and turmoil of Broadway at six o’clock that flashed before my eyes the picture of a still Breton forest where sunlight filtered through spring foliage and Sylvia bent, half curiously, half tenderly, over a small green lizard, murmuring: “To think that this also is a little ward of God!”

When I first saw the watchman his back was toward me. I looked at him indifferently until he went into the church. I paid no more attention to him than I had to any other man who lounged through Washington Square that morning, and when I shut my window and turned back into my studio I had forgotten him. Late in the afternoon, the day being warm, I raised the window again and leaned out to get a sniff of air. A man was standing in the courtyard of the church, and I noticed him again with as little interest as I had that morning. I looked across the square to where the fountain was playing and then, with my mind filled with vague impressions of trees, asphalt drives, and the moving groups of nursemaids and holiday-makers, I started to walk back to my easel. As I turned, my listless glance included the man below in the churchyard. His face was toward me now, and with a perfectly involuntary movement I bent to see it. At the same moment he raised his head and looked at me. Instantly I thought of a coffin-worm. Whatever it was about the man that repelled me I did not know, but the impression of a plump white grave-worm was so intense and nauseating that I must have shown it in my expression, for he turned his puffy face away with a movement which made me think of a disturbed grub in a chestnut.

I went back to my easel and motioned the model to resume her pose. After working a while I was satisfied that I was spoiling what I had done as rapidly as possible, and I took up a palette knife and scraped the colour out again. The flesh tones were sallow and unhealthy, and I did not understand how I could have painted such sickly colour into a study which before that had glowed with healthy tones.

I looked at Tessie. She had not changed, and the clear flush of health dyed her neck and cheeks as I frowned.

“Is it something I’ve done?” she said.

“No,—I’ve made a mess of this arm, and for the life of me I can’t see how I came to paint such mud as that into the canvas,” I replied.

“Don’t I pose well?” she insisted.

“Of course, perfectly.”

“Then it’s not my fault?”

“No. It’s my own.”

“I am very sorry,” she said.

I told her she could rest while I applied rag and turpentine to the plague spot on my canvas, and she went off to smoke a cigarette and look over the illustrations in the Courrier Français.

I did not know whether it was something in the turpentine or a defect in the canvas, but the more I scrubbed the more that gangrene seemed to spread. I worked like a beaver to get it out, and yet the disease appeared to creep from limb to limb of the study before me. Alarmed, I strove to arrest it, but now the colour on the breast changed and the whole figure seemed to absorb the infection as a sponge soaks up water. Vigorously I plied palette-knife, turpentine, and scraper, thinking all the time what a séance I should hold with Duval who had sold me the canvas; but soon I noticed that it was not the canvas which was defective nor yet the colours of Edward. “It must be the turpentine,” I thought angrily, “or else my eyes have become so blurred and confused by the afternoon light that I can’t see straight.” I called Tessie, the model. She came and leaned over my chair blowing rings of smoke into the air.

“No, I don’t,” I said angrily; “did you ever know me to paint like that before?”

“No, indeed!”

“Well, then!”

“It must be the turpentine, or something,” she admitted.

She slipped on a Japanese robe and walked to the window. I scraped and rubbed until I was tired, and finally picked up my brushes and hurled them through the canvas with a forcible expression, the tone alone of which reached Tessie’s ears.

Nevertheless she promptly began: “That’s it! Swear and act silly and ruin your brushes! You have been three weeks on that study, and now look! What’s the good of ripping the canvas? What creatures artists are!”

I felt about as much ashamed as I usually did after such an outbreak, and I turned the ruined canvas to the wall. Tessie helped me clean my brushes, and then danced away to dress. From the screen she regaled me with bits of advice concerning whole or partial loss of temper, until, thinking, perhaps, I had been tormented sufficiently, she came out to implore me to button her waist where she could not reach it on the shoulder.

“Everything went wrong from the time you came back from the window and talked about that horrid-looking man you saw in the churchyard,” she announced.

“Yes, he probably bewitched the picture,” I said, yawning. I looked at my watch.

“It’s after six, I know,” said Tessie, adjusting her hat before the mirror.

“Yes,” I replied, “I didn’t mean to keep you so long.” I leaned out of the window but recoiled with disgust, for the young man with the pasty face stood below in the churchyard. Tessie saw my gesture of disapproval and leaned from the window.

“Is that the man you don’t like?” she whispered.

I nodded.

“I can’t see his face, but he does look fat and soft. Someway or other,” she continued, turning to look at me, “he reminds me of a dream,—an awful dream I once had. Or,” she mused, looking down at her shapely shoes, “was it a dream after all?”

“How should I know?” I smiled.

Tessie smiled in reply.

“You were in it,” she said, “so perhaps you might know something about it.”

“Tessie! Tessie!” I protested, “don’t you dare flatter by saying that you dream about me!”

“But I did,” she insisted; “shall I tell you about it?”

“Go ahead,” I replied, lighting a cigarette.

Tessie leaned back on the open window-sill and began very seriously.

“One night last winter I was lying in bed thinking about nothing at all in particular. I had been posing for you and I was tired out, yet it seemed impossible for me to sleep. I heard the bells in the city ring ten, eleven, and midnight. I must have fallen asleep about midnight because I don’t remember hearing the bells after that. It seemed to me that I had scarcely closed my eyes when I dreamed that something impelled me to go to the window. I rose, and raising the sash leaned out. Twenty-fifth Street was deserted as far as I could see. I began to be afraid; everything outside seemed so—so black and uncomfortable. Then the sound of wheels in the distance came to my ears, and it seemed to me as though that was what I must wait for. Very slowly the wheels approached, and, finally, I could make out a vehicle moving along the street. It came nearer and nearer, and when it passed beneath my window I saw it was a hearse. Then, as I trembled with fear, the driver turned and looked straight at me. When I awoke I was standing by the open window shivering with cold, but the black-plumed hearse and the driver were gone. I dreamed this dream again in March last, and again awoke beside the open window. Last night the dream came again. You remember how it was raining; when I awoke, standing at the open window, my night-dress was soaked.”

“But where did I come into the dream?” I asked.

“You—you were in the coffin; but you were not dead.”

“In the coffin?”

“Yes.”

“How did you know? Could you see me?”

“No; I only knew you were there.”

“Had you been eating Welsh rarebits, or lobster salad?” I began, laughing, but the girl interrupted me with a frightened cry.

“Hello! What’s up?” I said, as she shrank into the embrasure by the window.

“The—the man below in the churchyard;—he drove the hearse.”

“Nonsense,” I said, but Tessie’s eyes were wide with terror. I went to the window and looked out. The man was gone. “Come, Tessie,” I urged, “don’t be foolish. You have posed too long; you are nervous.”

“Do you think I could forget that face?” she murmured. “Three times I saw the hearse pass below my window, and every time the driver turned and looked up at me. Oh, his face was so white and—and soft? It looked dead—it looked as if it had been dead a long time.”

I induced the girl to sit down and swallow a glass of Marsala. Then I sat down beside her, and tried to give her some advice.

“Look here, Tessie,” I said, “you go to the country for a week or two, and you’ll have no more dreams about hearses. You pose all day, and when night comes your nerves are upset. You can’t keep this up. Then again, instead of going to bed when your day’s work is done, you run off to picnics at Sulzer’s Park, or go to the Eldorado or Coney Island, and when you come down here next morning you are fagged out. There was no real hearse. There was a soft-shell crab dream.”

She smiled faintly.

“What about the man in the churchyard?”

“Oh, he’s only an ordinary unhealthy, everyday creature.”

“As true as my name is Tessie Reardon, I swear to you, Mr. Scott, that the face of the man below in the churchyard is the face of the man who drove the hearse!”

“What of it?” I said. “It’s an honest trade.”

“Then you think I did see the hearse?”

“Oh,” I said diplomatically, “if you really did, it might not be unlikely that the man below drove it. There is nothing in that.”

Tessie rose, unrolled her scented handkerchief, and taking a bit of gum from a knot in the hem, placed it in her mouth. Then drawing on her gloves she offered me her hand, with a frank, “Good-night, Mr. Scott,” and walked out.

II

The next morning, Thomas, the bell-boy, brought me the Herald and a bit of news. The church next door had been sold. I thanked Heaven for it, not that being a Catholic I had any repugnance for the congregation next door, but because my nerves were shattered by a blatant exhorter, whose every word echoed through the aisle of the church as if it had been my own rooms, and who insisted on his r’s with a nasal persistence which revolted my every instinct. Then, too, there was a fiend in human shape, an organist, who reeled off some of the grand old hymns with an interpretation of his own, and I longed for the blood of a creature who could play the doxology with an amendment of minor chords which one hears only in a quartet of very young undergraduates. I believe the minister was a good man, but when he bellowed: “And the Lorrrrd said unto Moses, the Lorrrd is a man of war; the Lorrrd is his name. My wrath shall wax hot and I will kill you with the sworrrrd!” I wondered how many centuries of purgatory it would take to atone for such a sin.

“Who bought the property?” I asked Thomas.

“Nobody that I knows, sir. They do say the gent wot owns this ‘ere ‘Amilton flats was lookin’ at it. ‘E might be a bildin’ more studios.”

I walked to the window. The young man with the unhealthy face stood by the churchyard gate, and at the mere sight of him the same overwhelming repugnance took possession of me.

“One night a comin’ ‘ome with ‘Arry, the other English boy, I sees ‘im a sittin’ there on them steps. We ‘ad Molly and Jen with us, sir, the two girls on the tray service, an’ ‘e looks so insultin’ at us that I up and sez: ‘Wat you looking hat, you fat slug?’—beg pardon, sir, but that’s ‘ow I sez, sir. Then ‘e don’t say nothin’ and I sez: ‘Come out and I’ll punch that puddin’ ‘ed.’ Then I hopens the gate an’ goes in, but ‘e don’t say nothin’, only looks insultin’ like. Then I ‘its ‘im one, but, ugh! ‘is ‘ed was that cold and mushy it ud sicken you to touch ‘im.”

“What did he do then?” I asked curiously.

“‘Im? Nawthin’.”

“And you, Thomas?”

The young fellow flushed with embarrassment and smiled uneasily.

“Mr. Scott, sir, I ain’t no coward, an’ I can’t make it out at all why I run. I was in the 5th Lawncers, sir, bugler at Tel-el-Kebir, an’ was shot by the wells.”

“You don’t mean to say you ran away?”

“Yes, sir; I run.”

“Why?”

“That’s just what I want to know, sir. I grabbed Molly an’ run, an’ the rest was as frightened as I.”

“But what were they frightened at?”

Thomas refused to answer for a while, but now my curiosity was aroused about the repulsive young man below and I pressed him. Three years’ sojourn in America had not only modified Thomas’ cockney dialect but had given him the American’s fear of ridicule.

“You won’t believe me, Mr. Scott, sir?”

“Yes, I will.”

“You will lawf at me, sir?”

“Nonsense!”

He hesitated. “Well, sir, it’s Gawd’s truth that when I ‘it ‘im ‘e grabbed me wrists, sir, and when I twisted ‘is soft, mushy fist one of ‘is fingers come off in me ‘and.”

The utter loathing and horror of Thomas’ face must have been reflected in my own, for he added:

“It’s orful, an’ now when I see ‘im I just go away. ‘E maikes me hill.”

When Thomas had gone I went to the window. The man stood beside the church-railing with both hands on the gate, but I hastily retreated to my easel again, sickened and horrified, for I saw that the middle finger of his right hand was missing.

At nine o’clock Tessie appeared and vanished behind the screen with a merry “Good morning, Mr. Scott.” When she had reappeared and taken her pose upon the model-stand I started a new canvas, much to her delight. She remained silent as long as I was on the drawing, but as soon as the scrape of the charcoal ceased and I took up my fixative she began to chatter.

I sent a shower of spray from the fixative over the canvas, and said: “Well, go on.”

“We saw Kelly and Baby Barnes the skirt-dancer and—and all the rest. I made a mash.”

“Then you have gone back on me, Tessie?”

She laughed and shook her head.

“He’s Lizzie Burke’s brother, Ed. He’s a perfect gen’l’man.”

I felt constrained to give her some parental advice concerning mashing, which she took with a bright smile.

“Oh, I can take care of a strange mash,” she said, examining her chewing gum, “but Ed is different. Lizzie is my best friend.”

Then she related how Ed had come back from the stocking mill in Lowell, Massachusetts, to find her and Lizzie grown up, and what an accomplished young man he was, and how he thought nothing of squandering half-a-dollar for ice-cream and oysters to celebrate his entry as clerk into the woollen department of Macy’s. Before she finished I began to paint, and she resumed the pose, smiling and chattering like a sparrow. By noon I had the study fairly well rubbed in and Tessie came to look at it.

“That’s better,” she said.

I thought so too, and ate my lunch with a satisfied feeling that all was going well. Tessie spread her lunch on a drawing table opposite me and we drank our claret from the same bottle and lighted our cigarettes from the same match. I was very much attached to Tessie. I had watched her shoot up into a slender but exquisitely formed woman from a frail, awkward child. She had posed for me during the last three years, and among all my models she was my favourite. It would have troubled me very much indeed had she become “tough” or “fly,” as the phrase goes, but I never noticed any deterioration of her manner, and felt at heart that she was all right. She and I never discussed morals at all, and I had no intention of doing so, partly because I had none myself, and partly because I knew she would do what she liked in spite of me. Still I did hope she would steer clear of complications, because I wished her well, and then also I had a selfish desire to retain the best model I had. I knew that mashing, as she termed it, had no significance with girls like Tessie, and that such things in America did not resemble in the least the same things in Paris. Yet, having lived with my eyes open, I also knew that somebody would take Tessie away some day, in one manner or another, and though I professed to myself that marriage was nonsense, I sincerely hoped that, in this case, there would be a priest at the end of the vista. I am a Catholic. When I listen to high mass, when I sign myself, I feel that everything, including myself, is more cheerful, and when I confess, it does me good. A man who lives as much alone as I do, must confess to somebody. Then, again, Sylvia was Catholic, and it was reason enough for me. But I was speaking of Tessie, which is very different. Tessie also was Catholic and much more devout than I, so, taking it all in all, I had little fear for my pretty model until she should fall in love. But then I knew that fate alone would decide her future for her, and I prayed inwardly that fate would keep her away from men like me and throw into her path nothing but Ed Burkes and Jimmy McCormicks, bless her sweet face!

Tessie sat blowing rings of smoke up to the ceiling and tinkling the ice in her tumbler.

“Do you know that I also had a dream last night?” I observed.

“Not about that man,” she laughed.

“Exactly. A dream similar to yours, only much worse.”

It was foolish and thoughtless of me to say this, but you know how little tact the average painter has. “I must have fallen asleep about ten o’clock,” I continued, “and after a while I dreamt that I awoke. So plainly did I hear the midnight bells, the wind in the tree-branches, and the whistle of steamers from the bay, that even now I can scarcely believe I was not awake. I seemed to be lying in a box which had a glass cover. Dimly I saw the street lamps as I passed, for I must tell you, Tessie, the box in which I reclined appeared to lie in a cushioned wagon which jolted me over a stony pavement. After a while I became impatient and tried to move, but the box was too narrow. My hands were crossed on my breast, so I could not raise them to help myself. I listened and then tried to call. My voice was gone. I could hear the trample of the horses attached to the wagon, and even the breathing of the driver. Then another sound broke upon my ears like the raising of a window sash. I managed to turn my head a little, and found I could look, not only through the glass cover of my box, but also through the glass panes in the side of the covered vehicle. I saw houses, empty and silent, with neither light nor life about any of them excepting one. In that house a window was open on the first floor, and a figure all in white stood looking down into the street. It was you.”

Tessie had turned her face away from me and leaned on the table with her elbow.

“I could see your face,” I resumed, “and it seemed to me to be very sorrowful. Then we passed on and turned into a narrow black lane. Presently the horses stopped. I waited and waited, closing my eyes with fear and impatience, but all was silent as the grave. After what seemed to me hours, I began to feel uncomfortable. A sense that somebody was close to me made me unclose my eyes. Then I saw the white face of the hearse-driver looking at me through the coffin-lid——”

A sob from Tessie interrupted me. She was trembling like a leaf. I saw I had made an ass of myself and attempted to repair the damage.

“Why, Tess,” I said, “I only told you this to show you what influence your story might have on another person’s dreams. You don’t suppose I really lay in a coffin, do you? What are you trembling for? Don’t you see that your dream and my unreasonable dislike for that inoffensive watchman of the church simply set my brain working as soon as I fell asleep?”

She laid her head between her arms, and sobbed as if her heart would break. What a precious triple donkey I had made of myself! But I was about to break my record. I went over and put my arm about her.

“Tessie dear, forgive me,” I said; “I had no business to frighten you with such nonsense. You are too sensible a girl, too good a Catholic to believe in dreams.”

Her hand tightened on mine and her head fell back upon my shoulder, but she still trembled and I petted her and comforted her.

“Come, Tess, open your eyes and smile.”

Her eyes opened with a slow languid movement and met mine, but their expression was so queer that I hastened to reassure her again.

“It’s all humbug, Tessie; you surely are not afraid that any harm will come to you because of that.”

“No,” she said, but her scarlet lips quivered.

“Then, what’s the matter? Are you afraid?”

“Yes. Not for myself.”

“For me, then?” I demanded gaily.

“For you,” she murmured in a voice almost inaudible. “I—I care for you.”

At first I started to laugh, but when I understood her, a shock passed through me, and I sat like one turned to stone. This was the crowning bit of idiocy I had committed. During the moment which elapsed between her reply and my answer I thought of a thousand responses to that innocent confession. I could pass it by with a laugh, I could misunderstand her and assure her as to my health, I could simply point out that it was impossible she could love me. But my reply was quicker than my thoughts, and I might think and think now when it was too late, for I had kissed her on the mouth.

That evening I took my usual walk in Washington Park, pondering over the occurrences of the day. I was thoroughly committed. There was no back out now, and I stared the future straight in the face. I was not good, not even scrupulous, but I had no idea of deceiving either myself or Tessie. The one passion of my life lay buried in the sunlit forests of Brittany. Was it buried for ever? Hope cried “No!” For three years I had been listening to the voice of Hope, and for three years I had waited for a footstep on my threshold. Had Sylvia forgotten? “No!” cried Hope.

I said that I was no good. That is true, but still I was not exactly a comic opera villain. I had led an easy-going reckless life, taking what invited me of pleasure, deploring and sometimes bitterly regretting consequences. In one thing alone, except my painting, was I serious, and that was something which lay hidden if not lost in the Breton forests.

It was too late for me to regret what had occurred during the day. Whatever it had been, pity, a sudden tenderness for sorrow, or the more brutal instinct of gratified vanity, it was all the same now, and unless I wished to bruise an innocent heart, my path lay marked before me. The fire and strength, the depth of passion of a love which I had never even suspected, with all my imagined experience in the world, left me no alternative but to respond or send her away. Whether because I am so cowardly about giving pain to others, or whether it was that I have little of the gloomy Puritan in me, I do not know, but I shrank from disclaiming responsibility for that thoughtless kiss, and in fact had no time to do so before the gates of her heart opened and the flood poured forth. Others who habitually do their duty and find a sullen satisfaction in making themselves and everybody else unhappy, might have withstood it. I did not. I dared not. After the storm had abated I did tell her that she might better have loved Ed Burke and worn a plain gold ring, but she would not hear of it, and I thought perhaps as long as she had decided to love somebody she could not marry, it had better be me. I, at least, could treat her with an intelligent affection, and whenever she became tired of her infatuation she could go none the worse for it. For I was decided on that point although I knew how hard it would be. I remembered the usual termination of Platonic liaisons, and thought how disgusted I had been whenever I heard of one. I knew I was undertaking a great deal for so unscrupulous a man as I was, and I dreamed the future, but never for one moment did I doubt that she was safe with me. Had it been anybody but Tessie I should not have bothered my head about scruples. For it did not occur to me to sacrifice Tessie as I would have sacrificed a woman of the world. I looked the future squarely in the face and saw the several probable endings to the affair. She would either tire of the whole thing, or become so unhappy that I should have either to marry her or go away. If I married her we would be unhappy. I with a wife unsuited to me, and she with a husband unsuitable for any woman. For my past life could scarcely entitle me to marry. If I went away she might either fall ill, recover, and marry some Eddie Burke, or she might recklessly or deliberately go and do something foolish. On the other hand, if she tired of me, then her whole life would be before her with beautiful vistas of Eddie Burkes and marriage rings and twins and Harlem flats and Heaven knows what. As I strolled along through the trees by the Washington Arch, I decided that she should find a substantial friend in me, anyway, and the future could take care of itself. Then I went into the house and put on my evening dress, for the little faintly-perfumed note on my dresser said, “Have a cab at the stage door at eleven,” and the note was signed “Edith Carmichel, Metropolitan Theatre.”

I took supper that night, or rather we took supper, Miss Carmichel and I, at Solari’s, and the dawn was just beginning to gild the cross on the Memorial Church as I entered Washington Square after leaving Edith at the Brunswick. There was not a soul in the park as I passed along the trees and took the walk which leads from the Garibaldi statue to the Hamilton Apartment House, but as I passed the churchyard I saw a figure sitting on the stone steps. In spite of myself a chill crept over me at the sight of the white puffy face, and I hastened to pass. Then he said something which might have been addressed to me or might merely have been a mutter to himself, but a sudden furious anger flamed up within me that such a creature should address me. For an instant I felt like wheeling about and smashing my stick over his head, but I walked on, and entering the Hamilton went to my apartment. For some time I tossed about the bed trying to get the sound of his voice out of my ears, but could not. It filled my head, that muttering sound, like thick oily smoke from a fat-rendering vat or an odour of noisome decay. And as I lay and tossed about, the voice in my ears seemed more distinct, and I began to understand the words he had muttered. They came to me slowly as if I had forgotten them, and at last I could make some sense out of the sounds. It was this:

“Have you found the Yellow Sign?”

“Have you found the Yellow Sign?”

“Have you found the Yellow Sign?”

I was furious. What did he mean by that? Then with a curse upon him and his I rolled over and went to sleep, but when I awoke later I looked pale and haggard, for I had dreamed the dream of the night before, and it troubled me more than I cared to think.

I dressed and went down into my studio. Tessie sat by the window, but as I came in she rose and put both arms around my neck for an innocent kiss. She looked so sweet and dainty that I kissed her again and then sat down before the easel.

“Hello! Where’s the study I began yesterday?” I asked.

Tessie looked conscious, but did not answer. I began to hunt among the piles of canvases, saying, “Hurry up, Tess, and get ready; we must take advantage of the morning light.”

When at last I gave up the search among the other canvases and turned to look around the room for the missing study I noticed Tessie standing by the screen with her clothes still on.

“What’s the matter,” I asked, “don’t you feel well?”

“Yes.”

“Then hurry.”

“Do you want me to pose as—as I have always posed?”

Then I understood. Here was a new complication. I had lost, of course, the best nude model I had ever seen. I looked at Tessie. Her face was scarlet. Alas! Alas! We had eaten of the tree of knowledge, and Eden and native innocence were dreams of the past—I mean for her.

I suppose she noticed the disappointment on my face, for she said: “I will pose if you wish. The study is behind the screen here where I put it.”

“No,” I said, “we will begin something new;” and I went into my wardrobe and picked out a Moorish costume which fairly blazed with tinsel. It was a genuine costume, and Tessie retired to the screen with it enchanted. When she came forth again I was astonished. Her long black hair was bound above her forehead with a circlet of turquoises, and the ends, curled about her glittering girdle. Her feet were encased in the embroidered pointed slippers and the skirt of her costume, curiously wrought with arabesques in silver, fell to her ankles. The deep metallic blue vest embroidered with silver and the short Mauresque jacket spangled and sewn with turquoises became her wonderfully. She came up to me and held up her face smiling. I slipped my hand into my pocket, and drawing out a gold chain with a cross attached, dropped it over her head.

“It’s yours, Tessie.”

“Mine?” she faltered.

“Yours. Now go and pose,” Then with a radiant smile she ran behind the screen and presently reappeared with a little box on which was written my name.

“I had intended to give it to you when I went home to-night,” she said, “but I can’t wait now.”

I opened the box. On the pink cotton inside lay a clasp of black onyx, on which was inlaid a curious symbol or letter in gold. It was neither Arabic nor Chinese, nor, as I found afterwards, did it belong to any human script.

“It’s all I had to give you for a keepsake,” she said timidly.

I was annoyed, but I told her how much I should prize it, and promised to wear it always. She fastened it on my coat beneath the lapel.

“How foolish, Tess, to go and buy me such a beautiful thing as this,” I said.

“I did not buy it,” she laughed.

“Where did you get it?”

Then she told me how she had found it one day while coming from the Aquarium in the Battery, how she had advertised it and watched the papers, but at last gave up all hopes of finding the owner.

“That was last winter,” she said, “the very day I had the first horrid dream about the hearse.”

I remembered my dream of the previous night but said nothing, and presently my charcoal was flying over a new canvas, and Tessie stood motionless on the model-stand.

III

The day following was a disastrous one for me. While moving a framed canvas from one easel to another my foot slipped on the polished floor, and I fell heavily on both wrists. They were so badly sprained that it was useless to attempt to hold a brush, and I was obliged to wander about the studio, glaring at unfinished drawings and sketches, until despair seized me and I sat down to smoke and twiddle my thumbs with rage. The rain blew against the windows and rattled on the roof of the church, driving me into a nervous fit with its interminable patter. Tessie sat sewing by the window, and every now and then raised her head and looked at me with such innocent compassion that I began to feel ashamed of my irritation and looked about for something to occupy me. I had read all the papers and all the books in the library, but for the sake of something to do I went to the bookcases and shoved them open with my elbow. I knew every volume by its colour and examined them all, passing slowly around the library and whistling to keep up my spirits. I was turning to go into the dining-room when my eye fell upon a book bound in serpent skin, standing in a corner of the top shelf of the last bookcase. I did not remember it, and from the floor could not decipher the pale lettering on the back, so I went to the smoking-room and called Tessie. She came in from the studio and climbed up to reach the book.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The King in Yellow.”

I was dumfounded. Who had placed it there? How came it in my rooms? I had long ago decided that I should never open that book, and nothing on earth could have persuaded me to buy it. Fearful lest curiosity might tempt me to open it, I had never even looked at it in book-stores. If I ever had had any curiosity to read it, the awful tragedy of young Castaigne, whom I knew, prevented me from exploring its wicked pages. I had always refused to listen to any description of it, and indeed, nobody ever ventured to discuss the second part aloud, so I had absolutely no knowledge of what those leaves might reveal. I stared at the poisonous mottled binding as I would at a snake.

“Don’t touch it, Tessie,” I said; “come down.”

Of course my admonition was enough to arouse her curiosity, and before I could prevent it she took the book and, laughing, danced off into the studio with it. I called to her, but she slipped away with a tormenting smile at my helpless hands, and I followed her with some impatience.

“Tessie!” I cried, entering the library, “listen, I am serious. Put that book away. I do not wish you to open it!” The library was empty. I went into both drawing-rooms, then into the bedrooms, laundry, kitchen, and finally returned to the library and began a systematic search. She had hidden herself so well that it was half-an-hour later when I discovered her crouching white and silent by the latticed window in the store-room above. At the first glance I saw she had been punished for her foolishness. The King in Yellow lay at her feet, but the book was open at the second part. I looked at Tessie and saw it was too late. She had opened The King in Yellow. Then I took her by the hand and led her into the studio. She seemed dazed, and when I told her to lie down on the sofa she obeyed me without a word. After a while she closed her eyes and her breathing became regular and deep, but I could not determine whether or not she slept. For a long while I sat silently beside her, but she neither stirred nor spoke, and at last I rose, and, entering the unused store-room, took the book in my least injured hand. It seemed heavy as lead, but I carried it into the studio again, and sitting down on the rug beside the sofa, opened it and read it through from beginning to end.

When, faint with excess of my emotions, I dropped the volume and leaned wearily back against the sofa, Tessie opened her eyes and looked at me….

We had been speaking for some time in a dull monotonous strain before I realized that we were discussing The King in Yellow. Oh the sin of writing such words,—words which are clear as crystal, limpid and musical as bubbling springs, words which sparkle and glow like the poisoned diamonds of the Medicis! Oh the wickedness, the hopeless damnation of a soul who could fascinate and paralyze human creatures with such words,—words understood by the ignorant and wise alike, words which are more precious than jewels, more soothing than music, more awful than death!

We talked on, unmindful of the gathering shadows, and she was begging me to throw away the clasp of black onyx quaintly inlaid with what we now knew to be the Yellow Sign. I never shall know why I refused, though even at this hour, here in my bedroom as I write this confession, I should be glad to know what it was that prevented me from tearing the Yellow Sign from my breast and casting it into the fire. I am sure I wished to do so, and yet Tessie pleaded with me in vain. Night fell and the hours dragged on, but still we murmured to each other of the King and the Pallid Mask, and midnight sounded from the misty spires in the fog-wrapped city. We spoke of Hastur and of Cassilda, while outside the fog rolled against the blank window-panes as the cloud waves roll and break on the shores of Hali.

The house was very silent now, and not a sound came up from the misty streets. Tessie lay among the cushions, her face a grey blot in the gloom, but her hands were clasped in mine, and I knew that she knew and read my thoughts as I read hers, for we had understood the mystery of the Hyades and the Phantom of Truth was laid. Then as we answered each other, swiftly, silently, thought on thought, the shadows stirred in the gloom about us, and far in the distant streets we heard a sound. Nearer and nearer it came, the dull crunching of wheels, nearer and yet nearer, and now, outside before the door it ceased, and I dragged myself to the window and saw a black-plumed hearse. The gate below opened and shut, and I crept shaking to my door and bolted it, but I knew no bolts, no locks, could keep that creature out who was coming for the Yellow Sign. And now I heard him moving very softly along the hall. Now he was at the door, and the bolts rotted at his touch. Now he had entered. With eyes starting from my head I peered into the darkness, but when he came into the room I did not see him. It was only when I felt him envelope me in his cold soft grasp that I cried out and struggled with deadly fury, but my hands were useless and he tore the onyx clasp from my coat and struck me full in the face. Then, as I fell, I heard Tessie’s soft cry and her spirit fled: and even while falling I longed to follow her, for I knew that the King in Yellow had opened his tattered mantle and there was only God to cry to now.

I could tell more, but I cannot see what help it will be to the world. As for me, I am past human help or hope. As I lie here, writing, careless even whether or not I die before I finish, I can see the doctor gathering up his powders and phials with a vague gesture to the good priest beside me, which I understand.

They will be very curious to know the tragedy—they of the outside world who write books and print millions of newspapers, but I shall write no more, and the father confessor will seal my last words with the seal of sanctity when his holy office is done. They of the outside world may send their creatures into wrecked homes and death-smitten firesides, and their newspapers will batten on blood and tears, but with me their spies must halt before the confessional. They know that Tessie is dead and that I am dying. They know how the people in the house, aroused by an infernal scream, rushed into my room and found one living and two dead, but they do not know what I shall tell them now; they do not know that the doctor said as he pointed to a horrible decomposed heap on the floor—the livid corpse of the watchman from the church: “I have no theory, no explanation. That man must have been dead for months!”

“The Monster” was originally printed in Strange Tales of Horror in 2011, and then reprinted in Crystal’s collection And They All Lived Happily Ever After! as well as the anthology Sycorax’s Daughters (where we ran across this)

The idea from this story came from two different incidents. Years ago when I was learning how to rollerblade I was cruising along Alki Beach. I was going faster than I should have because I hadn’t learned how to stop yet. So there was a car pulling out of the marina but he was looking the other way and didn’t see me and because I didn’t know how to stop I sped up. I passed in front of the car with only a half a foot between us and slammed into the back of a mountain of a man who was on the other side of the driveway. When he turned around I instantly regretted it as he had the words ‘WHITE’ and ‘POWER’ tattooed on each forearm and a large swastika tattooed on the side of his neck and he was huge and he looked at me like a concerned parent.

As he was helping to … the grass he bellowed at the driver, “What the hell is wrong with you, you coulda killed somebody!” Ok, so at this point there was maybe nine or ten other Hell’s Angel type of biker guys running from the bar across the street to their brother’s aide. The poor Mexican kid behind the wheel drove away.

Now I am surrounded by a bunch of men with racist tattoos, one of which who is kneeling at my feet and unlacing my skates, everyone is asking me if I was ok and I was so terrified by these guys I started crying. My tears prompted an even bigger man than the one I knocked the wind out of to send his girlfriend, named Spider, back into the bar to get me a glass of water. Another man helped me to my feet and asked me if I wanted a ride somewhere, and I said no, explaining that my car was parked only nine cars down. When Spider came back she handed me a can of lemonade, after promising everyone I was ok, and apologizing to “Mountain” for slamming into him I was allowed to leave.

Never in my life, as I walked barefoot on the hot pavement back to my car carrying my skates and lemonade, had I been so confused.

The second incident was day I sat down and wrote The Monster. There are some parts of my state that do not celebrate diversity and I was in one of those parts and had to stop for gas. The station is exactly like the one I wrote about, when I was going inside a guy was coming out, he wasn’t wearing a shirt because it warm that day, and he is the guy I based Caleb on, down to the last detail.

My heart started beating so fast that I thought I was gonna have a heart attack and this was my prayer please dear God, I can deal with anything he says to me, just don’t let him hit me. Not only did he not hit me, he didn’t say anything to me either. He opened his candy and waited for me because he was holding the door. I said thank you as I walked by him and he just nodded his head, jumped in his pick-up truck and left. I was like what in the hell. That encounter reminded me of the one years earlier and on the drive home I was left to wonder what makes a person abandon their oath? I pledged to protect this country against enemies both foreign and domestic and that’s a pretty big deal but so is walking around proudly displaying a swastika tattoo.

When I got home I wrote The Monster and I’ve been so surprised and amazed by the feedback I’ve received for this story.

The Monster

By Crystal Connor

1

After only four days of what was supposed to be a two-week visit, Maleka Davidson was leaving Alabama. Maleka hated this place. She was disgusted by the ignorance of poverty. The stifling heat reduced her to the sin of sloth. Her head hurt from trying to decipher these coded Southern sayings. Just last night, she figured out that the word Bard meant borrowed, Southern translation for the state of Georgia was Jawjuh, and that she was from the Nawth as in, and I quote, “Ya’ people from up Nawth sure do talk funny.” It was almost as if she needed an English-to-Southern-United-States dictionary.

Maleka was tired of eating fried food and drinking either grape or red Kool-Aid made with three cups of sugar, despite the directions clearly stating that only one cup was needed. Maleka was especially terrified of all the large and strange bugs that could star in their own horror movies. Maleka took a break from packing; even the slightest of physical activities made her sweat profusely. She lay on the bed and smiled about the conversation she had had with her uncle this morning at breakfast, revolving around the apparently sacred origins of grits.

“Maleka, y’all eat grits up Nawth?” Bryannah asked.

“Of course we do,” Maleka explained to her 12-year-old cousin. “There are quite a few farms within driving distance of Seattle that grow corn, but that…”

“Ain’t nothing as good as grits can be made from corn! Dontcha read yo’ bible?”

“My bible?”

“Exodus 16:15. What poured down upon hims chirren when they was roamin’ roun’ in dem woods was grits. It says so right in da Bible, ‘It’s the food the LORD has given you to eat.’

“So the manna that God rained on the Israelites on Mount Sinai was really grits?” Maleka asked slowly.

“Ain’t is what I said?”

Why not? Maleka had spent the last year fighting in the streets of a foreign country because someone had misinterpreted the holy writings of an ancient text, so why should it be any different right here at home? Using her toast as a spoon, Maleka took another bite of the buttery, salted grits and smiled. It was no wonder her uncle had mistaken them for ambrosia. Uncle Emmit went on to explain that after the miracle on Mount Sinai, there was no mention of grits for another 1,000 years. Experts, he explained, found evidence that grits were only used during secret religious ceremonies – and were kept away from the public due to their rarity.

The next mention of grits, he continued, “Was found in all dem ashes over there in Pompell in a famous woman’s diary.”

“Do you mean the ruins of Pompeii? What famous woman?” Maleka inquired.

“Herculaneum Jemimaneus.”

“Who?”

“Girl, you just as slow as molasses running downhill in January. Aunt Jemima.”

And if it wasn’t Uncle Emmit’s wild stories that re-invented history, it was her auntie Tammy’s constant complaint of how nothing made sense.

“Look at this damn blue bird sitting his ass upon that Goddamned tree branch! Look at him; that’s a damn shame. It just don’t make no damn sense!” No one offered that birds were supposed to be in trees; everyone just chuckled and shook their heads, and Maleka did the same.

Maleka knew she was going to miss them but she just couldn’t stay in the South. She was mortified that her extended family members, and their neighbors and friends seemed to perpetuate the negative stereotypes of blacks in the South. In her family’s defense, the whites down here didn’t seem much better. With their UFOs, swamp monsters, unfounded fear of the government, pickup trucks, and Confederate battle flags, Maleka couldn’t help but hear that banjo song from the movie Deliverance every time she listened to them talk.

The most unsettling thing about being in the South for Maleka was everyone’s devout belief in superstitions, and truth be told, this was the real reason she was leaving.

The woman who lived across the street from her grandmother’s house always dragged a broom behind her wherever she walked when she left the house, even if it was only to check the mail. When Maleka asked her great-grand-aunt why she did that, she was told, “Cuz she dohn wants deze fixuhs tuh git her foot track.” Maleka knew what fixuhs were before she had a chance to unpack. Fixuhs were evil spirits, and apparently, they were everywhere.

The first night Maleka stayed in her grandmother’s house, she noticed a broom upside down by her bedroom door. When she took the broom into the kitchen to put it away, pandemonium broke out.

Her cousin Maybell explained that the broom was placed outside her door to protect her from the hags, and that this protection was necessary because she had seen a hag with her own two eyes. Maleka thought if she drank as much as her cousin did, she would probably see things too. Not only were there hags but also there were signs, omens, dreams, mojo rings, witches, wearing a dime around your ankle, charms, talismans, myths and swamp monsters. Maleka’s sleep was unrestful, and during the day, she was jumpy and on edge.

“You all packed and ready to go?”

Maleka jumped nearly five feet off the bed at the sound of Leticia’s voice, and her cousin laughed until tears rained down her beautiful ebony face.

“Girl,” Leticia said as soon as she caught her breath. “You is just as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full o’ rocking chairs.”

“I must have dozed off; I didn’t hear you come in.” Maleka said through her smile. “Yeah, I’m almost done. I really didn’t have that much stuff to pack anyway.”

Leticia sat on the bed next to Maleka and pushed herself back until she was resting against the wall. Maleka did the same.

“You really can’t stay no longer?”

“Ticia, it’s so hot down here, I can barely think. Hey, why don’t you come up to Seattle? Once I get home and settled, I can buy you a plane ticket. You can stay as long as you like. I think you’ll like it. It’s really pretty, there’s lots of water, and its cool.”

“Girl, I ain’t never been on no airplane before.”

Maleka could hear the fear in her cousin’s voice. The two were the same age, 28, but her cousin had never traveled outside of her county.

“So? There’s a first time for everything. You can catch the Greyhound … I know! What about Amtrak? That’ll be cool … to ride the train across the country; I can even get you your own private cabin!”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, just think about it. OK?”

“I will.”

Both girls looked toward the door as their grandmother walked through it. Fat Mike was behind her, carrying a large Styrofoam cooler that looked heavy, even for him. Her grandmother had packed a feast that would have fed an army for a month.

“Grandma, this is too much food. I’ll be home in just a few days.” Maleka really wasn’t protesting, because her grandmother had packed all of her favorite food, even if it was more than she could eat in just a few days.

Fat Mike went to load her car, and her grandmother sat on the edge of the rickety bed and touched Maleka’s face before she started talking.

“Now don’t you go wandering too far off de road, don’t let darkness catch ya’ and stay out dem woods at all cost. If you hear a chain rattlin’ on de tree, you best be movin’ along, cuz it might be a plat-eye.”

Great, Maleka thought. Just what I need, another Southern monster. She had no idea what a plat-eye was, and she wasn’t going to ask. She didn’t want to know. All she wanted was to be back in the Great Pacific Northwest where all she had to worry about was good old-fashion ghosts, Bigfoot, and the occasional serial killer.

Her grandmother handed Maleka a small burlap sack tied closed with a piece of twine. “Keep this witchya at all times, no matter what happens.”

Maleka took the little bag with trembling hands. She didn’t want to take this with her; she didn’t even want to touch it. This was what she wanted to get away from in the first place. Maleka dropped the amulet of protection into her handbag and gave her grandmother a big hug and kissed her goodbye.

2

On the winding road that seemed to stretch on forever, Maleka saw a filling station that looked like it hadn’t been updated or remodeled in the last 100 years. She even heard the cheerful “ding-ding” as she pulled up to the pump. The breeze in the wake of a passing semi felt good against her sticky skin. She was grateful for the cooler temperatures that were chasing the submerging rays of the sunset.

Maleka bought two bags of ice, a six-pack of Coke, oil, and a road map she had GPS on her cell phone, but she hadn’t had a signal in almost three hours. Maleka also bought 45 dollars’ worth of gas and some candy. The old man smiled at her as she dumped her stuff in front of him to ring up. Maleka returned his smile while looking away from his blue running eyes, wrinkled skin and broken teeth. As Maleka was rummaging through her purse for cash, because Visa wasn’t really everywhere that she wanted to be, the charm her grandmother gave her tumbled out on to the vintage countertop.

Maleka had made it halfway back to her car before the old attendant came chasing out behind her.

“Hey, girl, wait a minute, you done left yo charm.”

Maleka turned to the sound of his voice and almost ran from the man who was holding the small bag her grandmother had given her. When he extended it for her to take, she flinched away from it.

“Oh. Thank you, sir, but I don’t think I need it.”

The man looked at Maleka with a flash of anger and it was clear that he was personally offended by Maleka’s fear of it.

“Your peoples gave this to you for good reason. You need it for protection. I reckon you a long way from home, so I suggest that you take this with you.”

Maleka took a step away from the man and shook her head.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to mess with stuff you don’t understand.”

“Girl you don’t have to believe but you can’t afford not to listen.” The man warned as he walked up to her and dropped the charm into one of her bags.

Maleka slowly turned around and walked away from him, so shaken up that she almost forgot to pump her gas. She drained her cooler, crammed in the six cans of Coke, and replaced the melted ice. She added oil to her car, opened the map, charted her course, and cursed the non-existent signal on her phone. As Maleka was placing the trash into the plastic bags, her attention was once again drawn to the charm resting at the bottom. She tossed all the trash on top of it, balled up the bags, and threw them away. As she sped away, she noticed the old man watching her leave from the window.

Maleka had been driving in the dark for almost two hours. When she first learned how to drive the freeway scared her the most, but when her stepfather took her on her first night drive she was calm and confident.

When they drove at night, there was really no need for his instructions, so he just let her drive. The night lessons were Maleka’s favorite time with her stepfather. He didn’t warn her about the dangers of boys, drugs and alcohol, he did not bitch at her for not doing her chores or getting just a C on her math test, or quiz her about military terminology. It was just she and Dad spending a few hours at night driving under a blanket of stars. Maleka had always enjoyed driving at night; she appreciated the solitude and welcomed the memories.

She could have shot herself for tilting her head all the way back to drink the last of the Coke. She looked back at the road in time to see a deer bolt out in front of her car and freeze just a few feet ahead of her. Despite everything she had been taught and had heard, Maleka slammed on the brakes and yanked her wheel heavily to the right. Her car slid off the pavement and lost traction in the gravel. She tried to right herself but overcorrected, sending the vehicle over the yellow line. As she fought the car to avoid any oncoming traffic on the two-lane stretch of road, the car returned to the correct lane before leaving the road, going into a ditch, and slamming into a tree.

“Goddamn it!”

Maleka put the car in park but left the engine running, afraid that if she turned it off, she wouldn’t be able to restart it. The front of the car was damaged, but not badly enough to deploy the airbags. She rubbed her head, unhooked her seat belt, and snatched her cell phone off the floor in front of the seat next to her.

No service.

“Fuck!” Maleka threw the phone back on the floor with such force that it bounced up and landed on the passenger seat. Maleka pounded on the steering wheel and looked into the rearview mirror.

The deer was still standing in the middle of the road. It turned its head as if to look in the direction behind them before returning its gaze to the car. The deer raised its head to the sky, and Maleka watched the antlers of the large animal retract back into its head.

That’s not what you saw; you hit your head pretty hard, and your vision is blurry. That isn’t what you just saw.

Maleka watched the deer stand on its hind legs and take the form of a man. He started to walk slowly toward the car.

Don’t let darkness catch ya and stay out dem woods at all cost.

Maleka grabbed the rear view mirror and moved it so that she could watch the man approaching as she reached beneath her seat for her gun. Without taking her eyes off of the man in the rearview mirror, Maleka put her car in reverse and then back in drive and back again until she gently rocked her car out of the ditch.

Only when she got the car back on the road did she take her eyes off the man. She pulled away slowly, but as she picked up speed, the front bumper, which was being dragged beneath the car, punctured a tire. The car began to wobble before it took a nose dive to the right, the tire so damaged that she was driving on the rim. She drove another 200 feet before the car died completely. She was on a slight decline, so she let the car coast down a bit, then steered the car off to the side of the road when she felt it losing momentum.

“FUCK!”

A quick glance in both the side and rearview mirrors did not reveal the man’s whereabouts, but she knew he was still coming.

Maleka took a deep breath and let her training take over. Her mother taught her how to shoot with a Smith & Wesson model 29.44 Magnum, and her Uncle Sam had given her a badge marked “expert.”

The wonder nine that Maleka held in her hands was Smith & Wesson’s M&P, with a 17-round capacity, and a velocity 100 feet per second above what was advertised. Maleka had no doubt of the weapon’s capability, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed something more.

Keep this witchya at all times no matter what happens.

“Fuck.”

She pulled the lever on her seat until the headrest was lying on the back seat, then turned around, pressed her back into the steering wheel, and waited for the man, deer, or whatever the hell it was that caused this accident, to close the distance between them.

Maleka reached over, opened the glove box, and grabbed the four extra high-capacity magazines. She grabbed the phone off of the passenger seat and shoved the clips and phone into the back pockets of her blue jeans. It wasn’t long after that she saw the top of the man’s head crest the hill.

“Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; protect me from the violent …” Maleka’s prayer was interrupted by movement on the edges of her peripheral vision. Maleka was hesitant to take her eyes off of the approaching man, but whatever was on the other side of the road was closer to her than he was. Her eyes slowly traveled to the view outside of her driver’s-side window. Her eyes seemed to almost drag her head with them. Blurs of black and gray shapes became sharp lines, defined images … more deer, methodically taking the shape of man.

Don’t panic.

“Deliver me from those who work evil; from the bloodthirsty, save me.” As if adding an exclamation point to her prayer, she pulled the trigger, killing a beast whose metamorphosis was nearly complete.

The rear window imploded. In the rain of broken glass and shadows Maleka fired six more rounds in rapid succession, crawled to the passenger side of her car, and ran into the deep, tangled abyss that is the Alabama wilderness.

Don’t let darkness catch ya’, and stay out dem woods at all cost.

3

The tree-lined paved road was lit by stars, but Maleka was plunged into absolute darkness once she entered the forest. After nearly tripping and breaking her ankle, Maleka kicked off her flip-flops and immediately gained speed. It was a double-edged sword, as her tender spa-pampered feet quickly yielded to the unforgiving rough terrain of sharp rocks, jagged twigs, and tangled and knotted tree roots that carpeted the floor of the wilderness.

As she ran, she unbuckled her belt and threaded her gun through it so that she wouldn’t lose it. She refastened the belt loose; the gun beat against her thigh as she ran, but she wanted to be able to maneuver her weapon freely when she needed to.

Instinctively, she stopped running. Maleka slowly, blindly, extended her hand out in front of her, and before her arm was fully outstretched, her fingertips brushed against the rough bark of a large tree. Maleka stepped closer, put her cheek against the tree, and then extended her arms outward as if to give the tree a hug. With her arms fully extended, the tips of her stretched and exploring fingers still felt bark on both sides.

Maleka kept her right hand on the tree and used her left hand as a feeler to detect any other large objects in front of her, until the large timber that blocked her path was behind her.

Her fear heightened her sense of awareness, and her deprivation of sight sharpened her ability to hear, Maleka found it easier to just close her eyes rather than peer into the darkness. She controlled her breathing and concentrated on the muted sounds of the forest.

The terrain underfoot became soft. Instead of rocks, pinecones, and fallen branches, Maleka felt leaves, moss, and mud. She stood still, cocked her head, and listened. The absence of sound alarmed her, but she continued to walk, slowly at first, then faster and faster until she was once again running at full tilt.

The ground was soft and soundless, but as she picked up speed, she heard branches snapping behind her to her left. Hoping to achieve the same level of strength, speed, and victory as the Greek Goddess Nike, Maleka ran. And ran, and ran.

And slammed into a low-hanging branch.

There was a flash of bright light around the edges of her vision, her feet swung out from under her, and she landed on her back. Her lower back just above her tailbone exploded in pain as it came into contact with a fallen log, and as her head bounced off the ground, Maleka bit her tongue. Running headlong into a thick branch had caused worse injuries than the car accident.

Maleka swallowed blood and listened to the sounds of the forest. Nothing.

She performed a quick mental diagnostic of her body and categorized her injuries.

She told herself she was fine and slowly sat up. Without warning, it started raining, not the light misty drizzle that she was accustomed to in Seattle, but a hard and heavy downpour of torrential rain of biblical proportions.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Maleka screamed up to the heavens. “Is this your idea of a joke? Well I don’t think it’s funny! Didn’t you hear me calling you for help?”

Maleka was standing, though she did not remember the physical act of standing up. Her hands were balled into tight fists, and she was defiantly staring into the night sky and blinking away the rain. A voice in her head suggested that maybe this was not the way she should be talking to God, but she was so desperately angry and so thoroughly terrified that she couldn’t stop herself.

“Give me a fucking break, answer my prayer, do something! I’m not asking you to part the sea; I’m just asking for a little help. Is that asking for too much? Are you there?”

God did not answer her. She couldn’t hear anything over the rain. She still couldn’t see anything, but she didn’t want to just stand there, so despite nearly having been decapitated, Maleka started running. She counted her steps as she ran. There were 2,112 military steps in one mile with a 30-inch step. Maleka’s running stride was 70 inches, so she knew she had run nearly two miles since plowing into that tree.

The soft mud that had padded Maleka’s footfalls was now an enemy combatant. Encouraged by the rain, the mud became thick and hostile, her feet were buried to her ankles with each step, she had to use force to wrangle her foot free, and before she knew it, she was calf deep in mud.

“This is fucking bullshit.”

Maleka took a deep breath, turned around, and slowly made her way out of the deep mud. A bolt of lightning arched across the sky. In the flash of light, Maleka saw that she was in a small valley. It took Maleka almost a full minute to register what she had seen on the valley ridge.

Her pursuers had morphed themselves into one of the most feared and formidable canines on both the face of the planet and in the depths of nightmares.

The wolf.

Maleka now had to run from a pack of dogs that had the ability to run at speeds of at least 40 miles per hour and sustain those speeds for several miles at a time.

Though there was nothing remotely humorous in Maleka’s situation, she started laughing.

4

Maleka bolted away from the descending predators. It took her ninety steps to reach the slight incline that marked the valley wall. Digging in with hands, forearms, knees, and feet, she scrambled up the hill. When she reached flat land, she stood up and ran. Maleka counted sixty steps before she tripped over an exposed tree root. She reached out with her hands to break her fall, but she kept falling.

Maleka slammed to the ground on her shoulder and began to tumble, roll, and slide. Once again, she was laughing, and she received a mouthful of dirt, leaves, and, to her utter horror, a bug. She hated watching the damsel in distress trip and fall in horror movies, and yet here she was falling for the second time.

Did she see lights? Maleka slid to a stop on her face, stood up, and ran. She did see lights. The lights that shone through the window of the cabin were like a beacon promising a safe haven from this storm.

She could hear the footsteps of the dogs behind her. She thought she heard them running past her as well, and knew that they were racing ahead to cut her off and surround her.

With every breath she took, she inhaled fire. Both of her feet were swollen, cut, and bleeding. Pain exploded from her feet to her jaw with each step she took. Her hands, arms, and face were scratched and cut. The pain in her side was so intense, she might as well have been pierced by the Spear of Destiny. The trees blocked out the light of the moon. It was so dark that she couldn’t even see the tips of her fingers on her outstretched arms. She’d just returned home from the war and was in excellent physical condition; otherwise, she would have been caught two miles ago. She kept running. She ran faster.

She was so close that the warm light glowing in the window offered her enough light to see the edges of her surroundings, but she didn’t look at what was moving within the shadows. She jumped over the four steps of the cabin’s patio and slammed her shoulder into the door, expecting resistance, but with one turn of the knob, the door opened.

The rug slid under her feet and she almost fell … again. As Maleka regained her balance, the only thing she saw was a pair of denim-blue eyes. It took three seconds for Maleka’s vision to pan out, allowing the panoramic view of the inside of the cabin to come into focus.

The man she was looking at was shirtless and tattooed. On his broad and chiseled chest was an eagle in flight, and clutched within its mighty talons was a large swastika. The man was sitting in a chair, his foot on the edge of the table, and his chair was tipped back on the two hind legs. Covering the wall he was against was a large Confederate battle flag – an image that, for the majority of black people living in the United States, is a symbol of racism. His hair might have been red or blond, but his head was shaved. He wasn’t alone. Another man stood by the window, and yet another sat on a small sofa directly in front of the man she had first seen.

Once the door was closed, she saw a large chair. It was as heavy as it looked, and she had to use all her strength to drag it to the door and position the chair under the door handle. Maleka stumbled a few steps back and turned to face the men she had locked herself inside with.

For almost five minutes, no one spoke.

She pressed her hand to the pain in her side and took a closer look at the guy by the window. He wasn’t standing, as she first thought; he was sitting on top of some type of cabinet. He had a huge sucker in his mouth, and she could smell the cherry scent of the candy from the other side of the room. He had the same denim colored eyes as the one leaning back in his chair. He wasn’t completely bald, because his red hair had grown out a little. It reminded Maleka of a peach.

The thought of such a juicy fruit only served to underscore the dryness of her parched throat. As if reading her mind, he tightened the cap on his bottle of water and tossed it to Maleka. She drank it down greedily. Cool water ran down the sides of her mouth as she drank, as much as she could before she started coughing.

Both of the man’s arms from shoulder to wrist were covered in colorful, incredibly detailed tattoos, but what stood out the most were the flags. On the inside of his upper right arm, near his chest, was a tattoo of a red flag with a black swastika in the center. On the left was the American flag. The man sitting on the couch wore a Dewalt wife-beater and was wearing a ball cap that read, “The South shall rise again.” At first she thought they all looked the same, but it was clear to her that the one leaning back in his chair and the one in the window were related, possibly brothers.

The cabin was just one big square room, the kitchen was along the wall to her left, and the view from that window was of more woods. A large brick fireplace sat in the center of the widest wall, and there was a door off to the side that Maleka guessed to be a bathroom. There were three sleeping bags rolled up in the corner along with three backpacks and a slew of hunting rifles.

Along the wall above the couch hung pictures of Hitler standing in a moving Jeep, bikini-clad blond women displaying tools, and redheads posing with cars. There was also a poster of the University of Alabama football team running on the field. Maleka was surprised to see that poster hanging so proudly, as most of the players in the poster were black.

Finally, the guy in the window swirled his candy to one side of his mouth and asked, “So what the fuck are you running from to make you think you’re safer in here with us than out there with a gun strapped to your belt?”

“A pack of wolves,” Maleka answered.

“No ma’am, you might wanna try that again. We ain’t got no wolves down here.” The candy man explained.

“I know, but they weren’t wolves at first.” Maleka’s thoughts were jumbled and confused, and so were her words. She heard herself talking and was afraid that she wasn’t making any sense.

“See, she told me to keep it with me, then I didn’t think I needed it, so I threw it away.”

“You threw what away?”

“I really didn’t think it would do any good; it’s just a stupid superstition.”

He slowly took the candy out of his mouth and asked again, “You threw what away?”

“The man at the gas station tried to give it back to me, but I didn’t take it.”

“HEY!” he shouted. “Do you hear me fucking talking to you? I’m not going to ask you again. What did you throw away?”

“The charm.”

“The charm?” He echoed. “What charm, what was it for?”

Maleka noticed how his eyes lowered to the gold cross she was wearing around her neck as he asked the question.

“It was to protect me from the monster.”

The man leaning in the chair slowly lowered it back to all four legs, and the one on the couch took off his ball cap and ran his hand through his thick blond hair. As his blond locks unraveled to fall against his sculpted shoulders, Maleka knew without a doubt that this man was a direct descendant of Thor.

Maleka could see the conversation the men were having with their eyes, but she had no idea what they were saying.

“Travis, she’s high. She’s probably from California, and they say they got some good-ass weed out there.”

The three of them shared a laugh as Travis put the candy back in his mouth and leaned against the window.

“I’m not high, and I’m not from California,” Maleka hissed.

Travis shrugged his shoulders. “That might be so, girl, but you ain’t from around here. You say you ain’t high, but you done spooked yourself so bad you ain’t thinking straight, and you ain’t making no damn sense, so I can’t tell either way.”

“I scared myself?” Maleka was furious.

“What you was running from is most likely coyotes.”

“I know the fucking difference between a wolf and a coyote,” she started, but the man in the chair interrupted her.

“Really, Big City? Because you said they weren’t wolves at first, so what were they then, dingos?”

More laughter.

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you too, you stupid fucking nigger cunt bitch! There ain’t no fucking wolves down here. The only dogs we have out there in our woods are the coyote and maybe … maybe a pack of strays. You was running through the woods at night. It’s dark out there, and the woods has a way of playing tricks with your senses. You was just seeing things.”

“Caleb’s right,” Travis explained. “You fucking people are all the same; you come down South and act like it’s a trip to the fucking zoo. Y’all come down here so that you can laugh at us ignorant, po’ white trash, redneck hillbillies, and point at the dumbass country niggers.”

“Y’all watch movies like Deliverance and think we’re just a bunch of inbreeds sitting down here making moonshine, playing banjos, eating fried chicken and spitting out watermelon seeds. Then the next thing you know, y’all is running through the woods in the middle of the night, shooting at shadows and running from dogs that are expecting to be hand fed.”

More laughter. Maleka started to say something, but stopped. She turned her head toward the door. The others heard it too. Scratching. The door shook gently. Something heavy landed on the roof, and the ceiling creaked in protest under the weight of whatever was walking across it. Everyone looked up at once.

The door shook again, forcefully this time. Travis tracked the footsteps on the roof with his head, leaning farther and farther back until he was looking directly above him.

There was a long deep howl lasting almost 10 seconds before the others in the pack answered the call.

Everyone started moving at once. Maleka unhooked her gun from her belt and reached into her pockets for the extra clips. Without taking his eyes off the ceiling, Travis stood, slowly turned around, and closed the interior shutters.

Caleb grabbed the hunting rifles that had been leaning against the fireplace. The man sitting on the couch flew past Maleka to close the shutters in the kitchen. He closed them in the nick of time. The glass in the kitchen window shattered, but the shutter was not breached.

“Ryan,” Caleb called and tossed a rifle to the man who now stood behind Maleka.

The silence that followed was deafening. With the enveloping hush, everyone looked at Maleka, who was looking at Caleb with a look that said I told you so.

When Maleka had first tried to explain the night’s events Travis thought it was a joke. Now he thought it was her fault. He flew from the window to loom over her.

“You fucking threw the Goddamn charm away? You just fucking threw it away?”

Travis was a whole foot taller than Maleka, and as he screamed down at her, she realized that the candy he had had in his mouth was not cherry flavored but, in fact, strawberry.

Neither his size nor his proximity intimidated Maleka, since both were to her advantage. Her situational awareness was acute. Maleka had mentally established that inside the cabin was her zone of security, and she knew where everything was.

From a very early age, Caleb had developed a healthy fear of women and learned to never underestimate their capacity for brutality nor be surprised by the vicious glee with which they carried out their monstrous deeds. Caleb did not like the way the girl’s demeanor had changed, and though he couldn’t pinpoint what had changed he just knew something had.

“Travis.”

“If you knew it was to keep you safe, why did you fucking throw it away?”

She knew how much room she had to maneuver. She knew how many steps it would take to reach Caleb, understood that he would have to be the next one neutralized, because under no circumstances was she going back outside into unfamiliar terrain while it was dark.

With eight older sisters, a mother who was acquitted for the slaughter of his father, and having served a ten-year prison sentence for killing a woman who was doing her best to kill him, Caleb had firsthand knowledge of how truly cruel and dangerous a woman could be, and he understood that they were in no way, shape, or form the weaker sex.

“Travis.”

“Y’all think y’all so much better than us, so sophisticated and educated.”

Maleka’s breathing slowed. She was unprepared to deal with deer that changed themselves into people and then changed themselves into wolves, but fighting men was what she had been trained to do, and she had seventeen confirmed kills under her belt just this year alone. Her personal best so far.

That was what it was. She was calm, almost relaxed. Travis was a big guy.

Most people who saw him coming would quickly look for the nearest exit, or cross the street. No one ever made eye contact with him, but this girl was looking him right in the eye and didn’t even flinch, and Caleb didn’t like that.

“Travis.”

Maleka slowly slid one foot in front of the other, but kept her hands at her sides, thus assuming a basic battle stance. Close-quarters combat was Maleka’s specialty. Because of her stealth, speed, agility, and ferocity in hand-to-hand combat, comrades in her unit started calling her “the black mamba.” Most people didn’t see her coming, and those who did lacked the necessary training to defend themselves, and perished. And such would be the case with Travis.

Before he realized that he had even stood up, Caleb found himself by his brother’s side. He gently pulled Travis away from Maleka and protectively stood between them.

“What the fuck were you doing out in the woods at night for anyway?” Travis demanded over Caleb’s shoulder.

“They crashed my car.”

“Of course they fucking crashed your car! Dumbass.” Travis was furious and pacing back and forth.

“I don’t understand why you’re so upset, Travis,” Maleka taunted. “You said I was shooting at shadows and running from dogs that are expecting to be hand fed. Maybe we should open the door and give them some doggie treats and scratch their heads.”

For a frightening second, Caleb was unsure if he was going to be able to restrain his brother. He would have loved nothing more than to knock that smug smirk off her face, but Caleb had a feeling that was exactly what she wanted, and he refused to be baited.

“Travis, there are four of us in here and enough guns for us to have three each. We just have to maintain our zone of security until morning, and then we’ll be able to offer adequate cover to reach the truck. The nearest town will be our extraction point.”

Travis and Caleb looked at each other in astonishment, and Maleka fought feelings of frustration.

“Extraction point?” Travis echoed. “Are you in the Army?”

Something else jumped onto the roof. The door bulged in violently as if kicked, but the chair under the doorknob held.

“These ain’t terrorists you was shooting at out there. There ain’t no fucking extraction point, and in case you haven’t noticed, we’re surrounded. The cavalry ain’t coming, and you just fucking got us all killed.”

Maleka was losing her patience with Travis.

“I killed two of them in the street.”

“Did you kill them, or did you just shoot them?”

The voice came from behind her. Maleka pivoted 180 degrees and took three steps back so that her back was toward the door and the three men were in view full.

“You said at first they weren’t wolves, so then, what were they?”

Whatever was on the roof was now jumping, as if trying to stomp its way through. The door was kicked again and splintered along the hinges. The front-room window shattered. The noise outside sounded like breaking tree branches, and a mixture of hyena calls and wolf howls. Ryan burst into hysterical laughter, and Maleka decided it wasn’t such a good idea to have her back to the door.

“Ok, Big-City, if you have a plan to get us all outta here alive, you might want to tell us, because that would be some pretty good fucking information to have right about now.”

Before Maleka had the time to ignore Travis’s hysteria, Ryan asked his question again.

“What were they at first?”

Before Maleka had a chance to answer, Caleb offered his hypothesis. “So what are we dealing with here, werewolves? Well, if that’s the case, we’re all fucked because none of these bullets are silver.”

“Can they fucking do that? The moon’s not even full!”

As Travis’s question drifted slowly toward silence, all of the men turned to Maleka for the answer. She thought that she was going to collapse as the heavy weight of how truly dire their situation was settled upon her shoulders. As if things were not challenging enough, unlike the men in her unit, these guys were not going to just do what they were told, and Travis was already becoming a problem.

Maleka’s plan A was to stay inside the cabin until daylight, but whatever monster had chased her in here, and had been kicking the door and jumping on the roof, had a different idea. Maleka was going to have to come up with a plan B and C and a contingency plan, and she should have done that 20 minutes ago.

Maleka took Caleb’s rifle to inspect it and was disappointed at her discovery. Caleb’s weapon of choice was a Winchester Model 70. A bolt rifle.

This was the perfect weapon for a sniper – and of course to use for hunting – but the mere seconds it took to reload this gun manually would cost someone their life in a combat situation. With a quick scan of all the weapons, she knew she wouldn’t find what she was looking for.

“What’s the matter?”

Maleka handed Caleb his gun back.

“I was really hoping for a semiautomatic, or at least a gun that could have been easily converted. Even a revolver would be nice. Are there any handguns here?”

“Semiautomatic?” Caleb asked. “I guess if you’re hunting people but we came out here to hunt deer. I got a Colt .38 out in the truck.”

“My state allows the use of semiautomatic for big-game hunting,” Maleka explained. “And the last thing anyone is doing right now is going outside.”

Maleka wanted nothing more than to knock Travis unconscious with the butt of his own gun, but as the best possible defense plan formulated in her mind, she knew she was going to need him.

“I’m not from California, Travis. I’m from Washington. Is there a window in the bathroom?”

“No,” they all answered at once. Finally, God had answered her prayer.

Maleka opened the door to the small bathroom and asked Ryan to drag over the chair that Caleb had been sitting in. She used the chair to hold the door open, then lined the bathtub with sleeping bags.

Because Caleb was the tallest, he was the one she put in the bathtub, and he was thankful for the padding of the sleeping bags, as he would be shooting directly over Maleka’s head from a kneeling position. Maleka wanted the gunfire aimed in such a way as to produce highest the concentration of fatalities. It was one thing to shoot at the heads of unsuspecting elk. It was another thing entirely to be shooting at moving targets that had the ability to change from one creature to another, and whose sole purpose was your demise. Travis’s position was on the ledge of the tub, and Ryan sat on the toilet. They would surround her as she sat on the floor, and her goal was to provide them with enough automatic fire to give them enough time to reload their guns.

With the men in place, Maleka moved the two floor lamps to each side of the bathroom door and used the outlets in the bathroom to plug them in. She directed the swivel heads of the lamps toward the cabin door and turned all the other lights in the cabin off. Just like a cop shining his light into your car window, not only would the bright lights of the 100-watt bulbs blind anyone, or anything, coming through the door, the intense white light directed outwards would provide a safe haven of darkness behind which they could hide.

They sat in the silent dark for almost twenty minutes, and when Travis started talking, it startled everyone.

The iron shutters on both windows started to rattle. Caleb cleared his throat, but when he started talking, his voice was full of emotion.

“You’ve always followed me. No matter where I went, I knew if I ever wanted my little brother, all I had to do was turn around and you’d be there. In all my life, this is the only time I wish you hadn’t followed me.”

Hearing Travis and Caleb say goodbye was more than Maleka could deal with. She had fought in four theaters in places that you would never be able to find on a map, just to be killed in her own country by a fiend that should not exist.

Keep this witchya at all times no matter what happens.

There was nothing she could do about it now, and Travis had been right all along. She indeed had killed them all. This was so unfair; it was just a stupid superstition, none of this was real. Except it was.

“I’m sorry.”

Maleka wasn’t just apologizing to Caleb, Travis, and Ryan. She was also apologizing to her cousin Maybell who put a broom by her bedroom door to keep her safe from the terrors that lurked in the night. She was apologizing to her grandmother, who had given her a gift that was meant to see her through on her journey, and to the gas-station attendant who knew how important it was when he tried to give it back after she left it on the counter. But more importantly, Maleka apologized to God for her earlier blasphemous display of disobedience.

With a final kick, the door broke in half, flying inwards in two pieces, and as the wind and the monsters rushed in, everyone started shooting.

“The Comet” originally published in 1920 as the tenth chapter of DuBois’s book, Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil

The Comet

By W.E.B. DuBois

He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world—”nothing!” as he said bitterly. Bits of the words of the walkers came to him.

“The comet?”

“The comet——”

Everybody was talking of it. Even the president, as he entered, smiled patronizingly at him, and asked:

“Oh, that was Halley’s,” said the president; “this is a new comet, quite a stranger, they say—wonderful, wonderful! I saw it last night. Oh, by the way, Jim,” turning again to the messenger, “I want you to go down into the lower vaults today.”

The messenger followed the president silently. Of course, they wanted him to go down to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for more valuable men. He smiled grimly and listened.

“Everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep in,” said the president; “but we miss two volumes of old records. Suppose you nose around down there,—it isn’t very pleasant, I suppose.”

“Not very,” said the messenger, as he walked out.

“Well, Jim, the tail of the new comet hits us at noon this time,” said the vault clerk, as he passed over the keys; but the messenger passed silently down the stairs. Down he went beneath Broadway, where the dim light filtered through the feet of hurrying men; down to the dark basement beneath; down into the blackness and silence beneath that lowest cavern. Here with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels of the earth, under the world.

He drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and stepped into the fetid slime within. Here at last was peace, and he groped moodily forward. A great rat leaped past him and cobwebs crept across his face. He felt carefully around the room, shelf by shelf, on the muddied floor, and in crevice and corner. Nothing. Then he went back to the far end, where somehow the wall felt different. He sounded and pushed and pried. Nothing. He started away. Then something brought him back. He was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black wall swung as on mighty hinges, and blackness yawned beyond. He peered in; it was evidently a secret vault—some hiding place of the old bank unknown in newer times. He entered hesitatingly. It was a long, narrow room with shelves, and at the far end, an old iron chest. On a high shelf lay the two missing volumes of records, and others. He put them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty. He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan lay bare its treasure—and he saw the dull sheen of gold!

“Boom!”

A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear. He started up and looked about. All was black and still. He groped for his light and swung it about him. Then he knew! The great stone door had swung to. He forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face. Then with a sigh he went methodically to work. The cold sweat stood on his forehead; but he searched, pounded, pushed, and worked until after what seemed endless hours his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again harshly on its hinges, and then, striking against something soft and heavy, stopped. He had just room to squeeze through. There lay the body of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. He stared at it, and then felt sick and nauseated. The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong, peculiar odor. He stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell fainting across the corpse.

He awoke with a sense of horror, leaped from the body, and groped up the stairs, calling to the guard. The watchman sat as if asleep, with the gate swinging free. With one glance at him the messenger hurried up to the sub-vault. In vain he called to the guards. His voice echoed and re-echoed weirdly. Up into the great basement he rushed. Here another guard lay prostrate on his face, cold and still. A fear arose in the messenger’s heart. He dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank. The stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent, and stretched the silent forms of men. The messenger paused and glanced about. He was not a man easily moved; but the sight was appalling! “Robbery and murder,” he whispered slowly to himself as he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of the president where he lay half-buried on his desk. Then a new thought seized him: If they found him here alone—with all this money and all these dead men—what would his life be worth? He glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to a side door, and again looked behind. Quietly he turned the latch and stepped out into Wall Street.

How silent the street was! Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was high-noon—Wall Street? Broadway? He glanced almost wildly up and down, then across the street, and as he looked, a sickening horror froze in his limbs. With a choking cry of utter fright he lunged, leaned giddily against the cold building, and stared helplessly at the sight.

In the great stone doorway a hundred men and women and children lay crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great, gaping doorway like refuse in a can—as if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they had rushed and ground themselves to death. Slowly the messenger crept along the walls, wetting his parched mouth and trying to comprehend, stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising terror in his heart. He met a business man, silk-hatted and frock-coated, who had crept, too, along that smooth wall and stood now stone dead with wonder written on his lips. The messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought the curb. A woman leaned wearily against the signpost, her head bowed motionless on her lace and silken bosom. Before her stood a street car, silent, and within—but the messenger but glanced and hurried on. A grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the “last edition” in his uplifted hand: “Danger!” screamed its black headlines. “Warnings wired around the world. The Comet’s tail sweeps past us at noon. Deadly gases expected. Close doors and windows. Seek the cellar.” The messenger read and staggered on. Far out from a window above, a girl lay with gasping face and sleevelets on her arms. On a store step sat a little, sweet-faced girl looking upward toward the skies, and in the carriage by her lay—but the messenger looked no longer. The cords gave way—the terror burst in his veins, and with one great, gasping cry he sprang desperately forward and ran,—ran as only the frightened run, shrieking and fighting the air until with one last wail of pain he sank on the grass of Madison Square and lay prone and still.

When he rose, he gave no glance at the still and silent forms on the benches, but, going to a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and thought the thing through: The comet had swept the earth and this was the end. Was everybody dead? He must search and see.

He knew that he must steady himself and keep calm, or he would go insane. First he must go to a restaurant. He walked up Fifth Avenue to a famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous, ghost-haunted halls. He beat back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights.

“Yesterday, they would not have served me,” he whispered, as he forced the food down.

Then he started up the street,—looking, peering, telephoning, ringing alarms; silent, silent all. Was nobody—nobody—he dared not think the thought and hurried on.

Suddenly he stopped still. He had forgotten. My God! How could he have forgotten? He must rush to the subway—then he almost laughed. No—a car; if he could find a Ford. He saw one. Gently he lifted off its burden, and took his place on the seat. He tested the throttle. There was gas. He glided off, shivering, and drove up the street. Everywhere stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence. On he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck lips; on past crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at 42nd Street he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the dead congestion. He came back on Fifth Avenue at 57th and flew past the Plaza and by the park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing past 72nd Street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a living form leaning wildly out an upper window. He gasped. The human voice sounded in his ears like the voice of God.

“Hello—hello—help, in God’s name!” wailed the woman. “There’s a dead girl in here and a man and—and see yonder dead men lying in the street and dead horses—for the love of God go and bring the officers——” And the words trailed off into hysterical tears.

He wheeled the car in a sudden circle, running over the still body of a child and leaping on the curb. Then he rushed up the steps and tried the door and rang violently. There was a long pause, but at last the heavy door swung back. They stared a moment in silence. She had not noticed before that he was a Negro. He had not thought of her as white. She was a woman of perhaps twenty-five—rarely beautiful and richly gowned, with darkly-golden hair, and jewels. Yesterday, he thought with bitterness, she would scarcely have looked at him twice. He would have been dirt beneath her silken feet. She stared at him. Of all the sorts of men she had pictured as coming to her rescue she had not dreamed of one like him. Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought. Yet as she looked at him curiously he seemed quite commonplace and usual. He was a tall, dark workingman of the better class, with a sensitive face trained to stolidity and a poor man’s clothes and hands. His face was soft and slow and his manner at once cold and nervous, like fires long banked, but not out.

So a moment each paused and gauged the other; then the thought of the dead world without rushed in and they started toward each other.

“What has happened?” she cried. “Tell me! Nothing stirs. All is silence! I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of God,—and see——” She dragged him through great, silken hangings to where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little French maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay prone in his livery.

The tears streamed down the woman’s cheeks and she clung to his arm until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the tremors racing through her body.

“I had been shut up in my dark room developing pictures of the comet which I took last night; when I came out—I saw the dead!

“What has happened?” she cried again.

He answered slowly:

“Something—comet or devil—swept across the earth this morning and—many are dead!”

“Many? Very many?”

“I have searched and I have seen no other living soul but you.”

She gasped and they stared at each other.

“My—father!” she whispered.

“Where is he?”

“He started for the office.”

“Where is it?”

“In the Metropolitan Tower.”

“Leave a note for him here and come.”

Then he stopped.

“No,” he said firmly—”first, we must go—to Harlem.”

“Harlem!” she cried. Then she understood. She tapped her foot at first impatiently. She looked back and shuddered. Then she came resolutely down the steps.

“There’s a swifter car in the garage in the court,” she said.

“I don’t know how to drive it,” he said.

“I do,” she answered.

In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind. The Stutz rose and raced like an airplane. They took the turn at 110th Street on two wheels and slipped with a shriek into 135th.

He was gone but a moment. Then he returned, and his face was gray. She did not look, but said:

“You have lost—somebody?”

“I have lost—everybody,” he said, simply—”unless——”

He ran back and was gone several minutes—hours they seemed to her.

“Everybody,” he said, and he walked slowly back with something film-like in his hand which he stuffed into his pocket.

“I’m afraid I was selfish,” he said. But already the car was moving toward the park among the dark and lined dead of Harlem—the brown, still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the silence—the wild and haunting silence. Out of the park, and down Fifth Avenue they whirled. In and out among the dead they slipped and quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great, square Metropolitan Tower hove in sight. Gently he laid the dead elevator boy aside; the car shot upward. The door of the office stood open. On the threshold lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the dead clerk. The inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and addressed but unsent:

Dear Daughter:

I’ve gone for a hundred mile spin in Fred’s new Mercedes. Shall not be back before dinner. I’ll bring Fred with me.

J.B.H.

“Come,” she cried nervously. “We must search the city.”

Up and down, over and across, back again—on went that ghostly search. Everywhere was silence and death—death and silence! They hunted from Madison Square to Spuyten Duyvel; they rushed across the Williamsburg Bridge; they swept over Brooklyn; from the Battery and Morningside Heights they scanned the river. Silence, silence everywhere, and no human sign. Haggard and bedraggled they puffed a third time slowly down Broadway, under the broiling sun, and at last stopped. He sniffed the air. An odor—a smell—and with the shifting breeze a sickening stench filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning. The girl settled back helplessly in her seat.

“What can we do?” she cried.

It was his turn now to take the lead, and he did it quickly.

“The long distance telephone—the telegraph and the cable—night rockets and then—flight!”

She looked at him now with strength and confidence. He did not look like men, as she had always pictured men; but he acted like one and she was content. In fifteen minutes they were at the central telephone exchange. As they came to the door he stepped quickly before her and pressed her gently back as he closed it. She heard him moving to and fro, and knew his burdens—the poor, little burdens he bore. When she entered, he was alone in the room. The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinx-like immobility. She seated herself on a stool and donned the bright earpiece. She looked at the mouthpiece. She had never looked at one so closely before. It was wide and black, pimpled with usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves. It looked—she beat back the thought—but it looked,—it persisted in looking like—she turned her head and found herself alone. One moment she was terrified; then she thanked him silently for his delicacy and turned resolutely, with a quick intaking of breath.

“Hello!” she called in low tones. She was calling to the world. The world must answer. Would the world answer? Was the world——

She bent close, she moved the pegs in the holes, and called and called, until her voice rose almost to a shriek, and her heart hammered. It was as if she had heard the last flicker of creation, and the evil was silence. Her voice dropped to a sob. She sat stupidly staring into the black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the thought came again. Hope lay dead within her. Yes, the cable and the rockets remained; but the world—she could not frame the thought or say the word. It was too mighty—too terrible! She turned toward the door with a new fear in her heart. For the first time she seemed to realize that she was alone in the world with a stranger, with something more than a stranger,—with a man alien in blood and culture—unknown, perhaps unknowable. It was awful! She must escape—she must fly; he must not see her again. Who knew what awful thoughts—

She gathered her silken skirts deftly about her young, smooth limbs—listened, and glided into a sidehall. A moment she shrank back: the hall lay filled with dead women; then she leaped to the door and tore at it, with bleeding fingers, until it swung wide. She looked out. He was standing at the top of the alley,—silhouetted, tall and black, motionless. Was he looking at her or away? She did not know—she did not care. She simply leaped and ran—ran until she found herself alone amid the dead and the tall ramparts of towering buildings.

She stopped. She was alone. Alone! Alone on the streets—alone in the city—perhaps alone in the world! There crept in upon her the sense of deception—of creeping hands behind her back—of silent, moving things she could not see,—of voices hushed in fearsome conspiracy. She looked behind and sideways, started at strange sounds and heard still stranger, until every nerve within her stood sharp and quivering, stretched to scream at the barest touch. She whirled and flew back, whimpering like a child, until she found that narrow alley again and the dark, silent figure silhouetted at the top. She stopped and rested; then she walked silently toward him, looked at him timidly; but he said nothing as he handed her into the car. Her voice caught as she whispered:

“Not—that.”

And he answered slowly: “No—not that!”

They climbed into the car. She bent forward on the wheel and sobbed, with great, dry, quivering sobs, as they flew toward the cable office on the east side, leaving the world of wealth and prosperity for the world of poverty and work. In the world behind them were death and silence, grave and grim, almost cynical, but always decent; here it was hideous. It clothed itself in every ghastly form of terror, struggle, hate, and suffering. It lay wreathed in crime and squalor, greed and lust. Only in its dread and awful silence was it like to death everywhere.

Yet as the two, flying and alone, looked upon the horror of the world, slowly, gradually, the sense of all-enveloping death deserted them. They seemed to move in a world silent and asleep,—not dead. They moved in quiet reverence, lest somehow they wake these sleeping forms who had, at last, found peace. They moved in some solemn, world-wide Friedhof, above which some mighty arm had waved its magic wand. All nature slept until—until, and quick with the same startling thought, they looked into each other’s eyes—he, ashen, and she, crimson, with unspoken thought. To both, the vision of a mighty beauty—of vast, unspoken things, swelled in their souls; but they put it away.

Great, dark coils of wire came up from the earth and down from the sun and entered this low lair of witchery. The gathered lightnings of the world centered here, binding with beams of light the ends of the earth. The doors gaped on the gloom within. He paused on the threshold.

“Do you know the code?” she asked.

“I know the call for help—we used it formerly at the bank.”

She hardly heard. She heard the lapping of the waters far below,—the dark and restless waters—the cold and luring waters, as they called. He stepped within. Slowly she walked to the wall, where the water called below, and stood and waited. Long she waited, and he did not come. Then with a start she saw him, too, standing beside the black waters. Slowly he removed his coat and stood there silently. She walked quickly to him and laid her hand on his arm. He did not start or look. The waters lapped on in luring, deadly rhythm. He pointed down to the waters, and said quietly:

“The world lies beneath the waters now—may I go?”

She looked into his stricken, tired face, and a great pity surged within her heart. She answered in a voice clear and calm, “No.”

Upward they turned toward life again, and he seized the wheel. The world was darkening to twilight, and a great, gray pall was falling mercifully and gently on the sleeping dead. The ghastly glare of reality seemed replaced with the dream of some vast romance. The girl lay silently back, as the motor whizzed along, and looked half-consciously for the elf-queen to wave life into this dead world again. She forgot to wonder at the quickness with which he had learned to drive her car. It seemed natural. And then as they whirled and swung into Madison Square and at the door of the Metropolitan Tower she gave a low cry, and her eyes were great! Perhaps she had seen the elf-queen?

The man led her to the elevator of the tower and deftly they ascended. In her father’s office they gathered rugs and chairs, and he wrote a note and laid it on the desk; then they ascended to the roof and he made her comfortable. For a while she rested and sank to dreamy somnolence, watching the worlds above and wondering. Below lay the dark shadows of the city and afar was the shining of the sea. She glanced at him timidly as he set food before her and took a shawl and wound her in it, touching her reverently, yet tenderly. She looked up at him with thankfulness in her eyes, eating what he served. He watched the city. She watched him. He seemed very human,—very near now.

“Have you had to work hard?” she asked softly.

“Always,” he said.

“I have always been idle,” she said. “I was rich.”

“I was poor,” he almost echoed.

“The rich and the poor are met together,” she began, and he finished:

“The Lord is the Maker of them all.”

“Yes,” she said slowly; “and how foolish our human distinctions seem—now,” looking down to the great dead city stretched below, swimming in unlightened shadows.

“Yes—I was not—human, yesterday,” he said.

She looked at him. “And your people were not my people,” she said; “but today——” She paused. He was a man,—no more; but he was in some larger sense a gentleman,—sensitive, kindly, chivalrous, everything save his hands and—his face. Yet yesterday——

“Death, the leveler!” he muttered.

“And the revealer,” she whispered gently, rising to her feet with great eyes. He turned away, and after fumbling a moment sent a rocket into the darkening air. It arose, shrieked, and flew up, a slim path of light, and scattering its stars abroad, dropped on the city below. She scarcely noticed it. A vision of the world had risen before her. Slowly the mighty prophecy of her destiny overwhelmed her. Above the dead past hovered the Angel of Annunciation. She was no mere woman. She was neither high nor low, white nor black, rich nor poor. She was primal woman; mighty mother of all men to come and Bride of Life. She looked upon the man beside her and forgot all else but his manhood, his strong, vigorous manhood—his sorrow and sacrifice. She saw him glorified. He was no longer a thing apart, a creature below, a strange outcast of another clime and blood, but her Brother Humanity incarnate, Son of God and great All-Father of the race to be.

He did not glimpse the glory in her eyes, but stood looking outward toward the sea and sending rocket after rocket into the unanswering darkness. Dark-purple clouds lay banked and billowed in the west. Behind them and all around, the heavens glowed in dim, weird radiance that suffused the darkening world and made almost a minor music. Suddenly, as though gathered back in some vast hand, the great cloud-curtain fell away. Low on the horizon lay a long, white star—mystic, wonderful! And from it fled upward to the pole, like some wan bridal veil, a pale, wide sheet of flame that lighted all the world and dimmed the stars.

In fascinated silence the man gazed at the heavens and dropped his rockets to the floor. Memories of memories stirred to life in the dead recesses of his mind. The shackles seemed to rattle and fall from his soul. Up from the crass and crushing and cringing of his caste leaped the lone majesty of kings long dead. He arose within the shadows, tall, straight, and stern, with power in his eyes and ghostly scepters hovering to his grasp. It was as though some mighty Pharaoh lived again, or curled Assyrian lord. He turned and looked upon the lady, and found her gazing straight at him.

Silently, immovably, they saw each other face to face—eye to eye. Their souls lay naked to the night. It was not lust; it was not love—it was some vaster, mightier thing that needed neither touch of body nor thrill of soul. It was a thought divine, splendid.

Slowly, noiselessly, they moved toward each other—the heavens above, the seas around, the city grim and dead below. He loomed from out the velvet shadows vast and dark. Pearl-white and slender, she shone beneath the stars. She stretched her jeweled hands abroad. He lifted up his mighty arms, and they cried each to the other, almost with one voice, “The world is dead.”

“Long live the——”

“Honk! Honk!” Hoarse and sharp the cry of a motor drifted clearly up from the silence below. They started backward with a cry and gazed upon each other with eyes that faltered and fell, with blood that boiled.

“Honk! Honk! Honk! Honk!” came the mad cry again, and almost from their feet a rocket blazed into the air and scattered its stars upon them. She covered her eyes with her hands, and her shoulders heaved. He dropped and bowed, groped blindly on his knees about the floor. A blue flame spluttered lazily after an age, and she heard the scream of an answering rocket as it flew.

Then they stood still as death, looking to opposite ends of the earth.

“Clang—crash—clang!”

The roar and ring of swift elevators shooting upward from below made the great tower tremble. A murmur and babel of voices swept in upon the night. All over the once dead city the lights blinked, flickered, and flamed; and then with a sudden clanging of doors the entrance to the platform was filled with men, and one with white and flying hair rushed to the girl and lifted her to his breast. “My daughter!” he sobbed.

Behind him hurried a younger, comelier man, carefully clad in motor costume, who bent above the girl with passionate solicitude and gazed into her staring eyes until they narrowed and dropped and her face flushed deeper and deeper crimson.

“Julia,” he whispered; “my darling, I thought you were gone forever.”

She looked up at him with strange, searching eyes.

“Fred,” she murmured, almost vaguely, “is the world—gone?”

“Only New York,” he answered; “it is terrible—awful! You know,—but you, how did you escape—how have you endured this horror? Are you well? Unharmed?”

“Unharmed!” she said.

“And this man here?” he asked, encircling her drooping form with one arm and turning toward the Negro. Suddenly he stiffened and his hand flew to his hip. “Why!” he snarled. “It’s—a—nigger—Julia! Has he—has he dared——”

She lifted her head and looked at her late companion curiously and then dropped her eyes with a sigh.

“He has dared—all, to rescue me,” she said quietly, “and I—thank him—much.” But she did not look at him again. As the couple turned away, the father drew a roll of bills from his pockets.

“Well, Jim, I thank you. I’ve always liked your people. If you ever want a job, call on me.” And they were gone.

The crowd poured up and out of the elevators, talking and whispering.

“Who was it?”

“Are they alive?”

“How many?”

“Two!”

“Who was saved?”

“A white girl and a nigger—there she goes.”

“A nigger? Where is he? Let’s lynch the damned——”

“Shut up—he’s all right-he saved her.”

“Saved hell! He had no business——”

“Here he comes.”

Into the glare of the electric lights the colored man moved slowly, with the eyes of those that walk and sleep.

“Well, what do you think of that?” cried a bystander; “of all New York, just a white girl and a nigger!”

The colored man heard nothing. He stood silently beneath the glare of the light, gazing at the money in his hand and shrinking as he gazed; slowly he put his other hand into his pocket and brought out a baby’s filmy cap, and gazed again. A woman mounted to the platform and looked about, shading her eyes. She was brown, small, and toil-worn, and in one arm lay the corpse of a dark baby. The crowd parted and her eyes fell on the colored man; with a cry she tottered toward him.

One night I woke up talking to myself, whispering the title of this story. That was the embryo, and now you’re reading the full creature. This is for those who know insomnia and what it is to never have a dreamless night.

Dedicated to Marcos. Sleep well, my friend.

All My Nightmares Are Named Heather

by Mário Coelho

She’s always this close when I wake up, less than a palm’s distance bridging our noses. Big eyes, darker than this penumbra. Pupils lightly flickering, like the TV static behind us. In these roadside motel rooms, everything rustles and murmurs. The carpet is pregnant with aborted cigarette butts and dead smells—sweat and barely washed bedding.

“You were dreaming,” she says.

“I was.” My voice, hoarse. Blind fingers reach out for the bedside table, grab the glass. A bit of water left overnight. Tastes like dust.

“I told you.” These post-nightmare conversations of ours, dirty laundry beating against the washing machine. Cycling. Hushed, like the drowned out buzzing of the late-night driving outside. “She’s no one. Nothing. A bad dream I don’t know.”

“We only dream of things we know.”

Sarah’s right. I hate that she is, because my brain’s still whirring and my words lag, lost. Heather’s someone ingrained in my headache. A mishmash of all the women I’ve seen, a hodgepodge of flesh pressed together into anonymity. I never see her face, not really. I see her mouth open and her gasp escape, I see the cuts in her face and legs. Her wide-eyed flight–is she running from me?

“Are you jealous of my nightmares?” I ask.

“You’re theirs, every night.”

“I’m yours too.”

Sarah’s sad, slight smile. A contour of faded, smudged lipstick. She forgot to take off her makeup again. We always go to sleep in a hurry and leave with haste. We live in a haze; art conventions to book presentations, second category artists chasing morsels of monetary appreciation. Sleeping in run-down motels, eating run-down food in run-down diners. Driving on run-down roads, where pets turn into road-kill. Fido’s jaw slackening over his brains. Mr. Whiskers a gushy, warm ball of blood and fur. They still move, but it’s just maggots or rats.

That’s the last time Sarah painted. We stopped the car and I got out for a piss and a smoke, and she used the hood as a stool and painted the rotting fur ball. Carcass to canvas.

“Someone is grieving him now,” I said, puffing out smoke. Or cold.

She blinked. “Or someone abandoned him.”

That’s the gap between us. To me, failure is asymptomatic. To her it’s asymptotic. My words are unchanged, but hers are uncharged. She lost that starving gleeful drive, the boundless optimism soaking her brush in blues and whites. Now she paints in black and red. Or not at all.

I haven’t written a line in three years. And she paints rotting animals.

“I’ve got to pee,” she says. “Get hard for me.”

But I know she isn’t going to piss. I wait until she tiptoes into the bathroom to grab my dick, and then she closes the door and I hear her muffled retching. Maybe she’s turned bulimic, but we’ve always kept our mental illnesses private. I get hard as her vomit splashes the sink. It’s not attractive, but it’s Pavlovian.

She comes out wiping her mouth. I take off the covers. She slips inside them, I slip inside her, and she kisses me. It tastes acrid, and of copper and perfume. We fuck silently. The next door guest is fucking too. Saw him in the hallway before, sweaty arm over a younger girl. I don’t know if she’s moaning or crying. I breathe in tune with the man’s grunts.

But I am. Sarah falls asleep, still wrapped in my sweat. This fucking of ours, I don’t know if makes us deplorable or stagnant.

I fall asleep too. And Heather’s still there, running ahead. I run behind, trailing the red footprints she leaves on the wet ground.

“Heather, wait!” In my dreams I half-scream, half-whisper. “Wait!”

She looks over her shoulder. “Sam!”

I can’t recognize her face. I see its features, and they’re familiar but somehow blank. Like someone is hiding her from me.

“Heather! Stop!”

“Sam!” Despair drips from her voice. She almost trips, and her head fades from view, but then she’s up with a start, sprinting farther as I creep closer. I can almost see what she’s really like. A slender nose. Dark, bruised, crying eyes. Her lips mouthing: “Sam, she’s behind you! Run!”

I look behind. The headboard, faded wood glazed by shutter-cut streetlamp light. Sarah’s chest moves slowly up and down, prickled with perspiration. Her head lays on her hand.

She’s staring at me.

“We have to do something about this,” she whispers.

I reach for the glass. Empty. I lick the sweat off my lips. “What do we do?”

“We keep moving.”

Our Plymouth rumbles down the road. Around us, dew-kissed woods glisten under a gray morning. Sarah wears her sunglasses, hiding the dark circles under her eyes from the reflection in the rear-view mirror. We pass little towns with listless people, stop for gas and Sarah buys a Snickers bar. Munches it carefully, like she’s going to puke any time again.

“Yeah. Vomiting every night can’t be good for them.” Like vomit itself, I regret my words as soon as they come out.

Sarah’s mirrored lenses stare at me. I can’t see my shame in them; I’m impassive as always. “What did you say?”

“It’s one of those personal taboos of ours, isn’t it?” Don’t know what’s making me press the subject. Then Heather flashes before me–a ghost in the windscreen. “One of those unspoken things.” My voice, is it shaking?

Sarah is looking at my hands. My fingers are white from gripping the wheel hard. I relax them. She says nothing.

“Are you pregnant?” I blurt. “Haven’t seen you take the pill.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” she says.

“I think I do.”

“No, you really don’t.” She lays her head against the window and licks her lips. Her teeth are spotted with blood, or lipstick.

She’s still quiet when we get to our destination, a small gallery struggling to appear filled with bored small town dwellers. The mayor is shaking everyone’s hands when I park the car. Next to me, a pair of teenagers take turns sucking on their cigarettes and each other’s mouths.

The mayor escorts us inside. “Sam Russell and Sarah Rose, writer and painter!” he says. “This is true love, folks.”

I spew out my barely-rehearsed presentation, my sales pitch. Sarah hangs her pictures and sits by them, hands on her lap, sunglasses still on. Old people buy a couple of books and a portrait, more interested in seeing new faces than anything else. The mayor promises to fix potholes.

“Is there a lot of swearing in this book?” an old lady asks, brandishing a copy of ‘Nightmare Parasite’, by Sam Russell. I’m about to say yes, or no, when I realize I can’t remember which is right. I’m left there, tongue frozen against the roof of my mouth.

She takes my silence for an answer, and adds: “She’s beautiful.”

“Who?”

“Your wife.” The old woman strokes her scarf, sighing wistfully. “We’re all somebody’s beautiful wife, at some point.”

“Or maybe forever,” I say. I strain a smile. My heart thrums.

The old woman laughs, shaking her head like she’s remembering something I’m not. “Oh, never trust a writer’s flattery.” She squeezes my arm. “I bet she’s thinking of you, when she paints.” I glance at one of Sarah’s paintings. A smashed dog’s skull, red-speckled black tar. “And I know you were thinking of her when you wrote this book.”

“I don’t think this is a love story.” I spin the pen between my fingers and look at the book cover. A hanged woman swaying from a tree, drawn in a murky, earthy style. Sarah did it. “Who should I sign it for?”

“Joe. Joe Maragos. He’s always loved mystery novels, my husband. Had a couple at his bedside in the end,” the lady says. Her lip quivers, then her voice. “He passed away in June.”

I avert my eyes down to the book. She’s not just mourning Joe, she’s also prematurely mourning herself. When our spouses go, along with them our last fibers of stubborn, irrational immortality. I remember writing about this, somehow. I remember knowing it. Or faking it.

I open the book while she sobs, jot down a quick Joe Maragos, may he live in our stories, unwritten. Make a pretty lie, and people will find comfort in it. My more honest sentences are the barest. Like how I dedicated the book to Sarah. A simple “For Heather”.

I drop the book, it smacks down on the edge of the table and pirouettes to the floor spine-first. Joe’s wife gabbles something, but I can’t hear her over the rumbling silence in my head.

“For Heather”

I grab another copy of ‘Nightmare Parasite’ and speed walk towards the door, leaving a mumbling, knee-creaking Joe’s wife behind. I excuse myself through the sparse crowd and nod at Sarah, who remains sitting still.

It’s cold outside, hoarfrost-covered pine trees line the other side of the road. The scent carries over, dappled with car-exhaust. The teenage lovebirds are still smashing tongues, covered with specks of slow-falling snow.

“Hey, guys, can I bum a smoke?” I ask them.

Their lips smack apart. “Huh, sure,” the kid says, fumbling around his pockets to hand me a cigarette. “Lighter?”

If anything, I’m heavier. Already miss apathy. “Sure.”

“Want one more for the road?” the kid asks, lighting my cig.

“Nah, I’m trying to quit. Thanks.”

I get in the Plymouth, take off my boots and jacket and turn on the heating. I read ‘Nightmare Parasite’ as the windows fog up. The writing is composed of crisp, clear cynicism. I can see the hows and the whys, but I can’t remember writing it. The words start to blur, and my brain congeals to a slow.

A horror novel – neither novel nor horrific – about a couple being chased by the man’s dead ex-girlfriend.

She was always in his nightmares, running. That was her sustenance, nightmares. She ate them one by one, with no teeth of her own. Until he was always dreaming of her.

Sunlight stays frozen in gray as the hours go by. The teens fondle each other against a beat-up Ford, ignorant or ignoring the glares of the odd old person coming in or out of the gallery. Hunger blunted, heart racing, I speed read half the book. Before the Ritalin crash stabs me between the eyes and slurs my brain, I replay in my head a passage from the last chapter I read:

‘We keep moving,’ she said.

The man simply nodded, too weak for more than laying down in bed in the fetal position. She stroked his cheek. Silver-lining was that the creature would eat most of his nightmares; wouldn’t let him relive seeing his mother dead, mouth bloody and agape in a last, toothless grin.

I open the window to get some air, and catch a lungful of Sarah. A blend of ink, my smoke and her vanilla-scented deodorant. “People were looking for you,” she says.

“Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t feeling too good.”

“Something you ate?”

“Maybe.” I lick my teeth. “The books?”

“The mayor bought them all. He’ll transfer the money, it should be available tomorrow. I think he feels sorry for you.”

I wait until Sarah circles the car and gets inside. “Why’s that?” I ask.

Sarah shrugs. “You just have that look.”

That’s something we have in common. The vacuity of words, how we sync them in a blank page or canvas. There are many meanings behind that look, but she means none of them, and I get the one I want. We’re lazy readers, feeding each other’s plots.

“Hey, have you actually read this?” I ask, brandishing the book.

She glances at it. For the first time in my short memory she wavers. “I . . . can’t remember.”

“I thought so. We struggle to remember things lately, don’t we?”

“I think we’ve just been really tired.” She puts the pack of Ritalin back in the glove compartment and closes it. “You shouldn’t take these, they screw up your sleep.”

Continuous vacuities, flowing into semantic spam. “Sarah, I think something serious is going on. This book, my book . . . You have to read it. I think it’s about us.”

Joe’s wife, a foggy figure through the windshield, waves at me as she walks by, cradling my book against the cold. Sarah doesn’t even look at her when I wave back. “They say all writers write about themselves,” she says.

“This is different. I don’t think this is just about me, I think this is for me.” I let my mouth hang, voice dragging, and stammer: “Like a diary of sorts. To make me remember.”

“Hm. And is it working?”

I look away. “No.”

“Because it’s fiction, love. That’s all it is.”

“There’s more, Sarah. There’s Heather. I dedicated the book to her.” I show it to her, and her neatly-trimmed eyebrows wrinkle together. “Sarah, who is Heather? Why can’t I remember?”

“Who is Heather, Sam?” Sarah’s voice is pitched in acid. Her accusations, these aren’t the kind of vacant words I’m used to. She’s smearing the tabula rasa before handing it to me. “Why is she in your nightmares?”

“I don’t know!” Did I yell? Sarah’s taken aback, a crossroad of anger and surprise. “I don’t know . . . I think she’s an ex-girlfriend, and I think she’s dead. But . . . somehow she feeds off my nightmares.”

“Heather is a dead girlfriend you don’t remember, and she’s eating your dreams.” Sarah struggles to contain her sarcasm. “Yeah, they should be calorie-dense.”

“I . . . Yes, it’s not the most lucid thing I’ve said.”

“It really isn’t.” She sighs, then winces and sucks on her lips.

“Toothache?”

“It’s nothing.” Another longer sigh. “Look, Sam, when we first started dating, you told me you were a method writer. That I remember, because it was the snobbiest thing I’d ever heard. Whatever it is you did to write that book, I don’t care, but it is not you, and it is not real.”

I’m going to say I don’t remember, and then there it is: Heather, again a ghost briefly in the windshield.

I don’t know what to say. “I don’t know what do”, I say.

Sarah’s face slacks and softens into that sad half-smile of hers. “But I do, Sam.” No emptiness there, and I hunger for her lullaby. “We keep moving.”

Into another motel room swiveling in lamp-made twilight. Heather is here with me, coalescing amid the twigs and tree trunks as she runs. I run after, trailing her familiar litany, hollow echoes thumping against the dirt and leaves.

She mumbles, covering her mouth. Pebbles stick to the back of her hand like canker sores. She laughs, and cries, and when she moves her hand, I see her mouth is dark-red, toothless.

“Eating my nightmares,” I say. “With no teeth of your own.”

But I’m talking to a wide-eyed Sarah.

“Dreaming of her again,” she says.

I fumble around for the bedside lamp. Sarah’s pupils constrict under the light.

“Where’s the book?” I ask. “I have to finish it.”

Sarah lowers her chin in almost predatory worry.

“I think you left it in the gallery.”

“No, no.” I slide into a t-shirt and jeans, shaking my head against post-sleep nausea. “Must have left it in the car. I’ll be back.”

“You won’t find it.” Whatever else she’s about to say is swallowed back with the vomit. Her bulimia, my night terrors, the bickering children we’ve never had. She’s nodding or holding it in and I’m up in a run, boots untied. I reach the end of the hallway just in time to hear her slam the bathroom door.

Outside, a finger-cutting breeze drags the stench of cooking sulfur from a nearby paper-mill. That’s how we sleep on the cheap. Each week stinks differently. The smell is ingrained in the car seats, wafting off as I fumble about for the book. I check the glove compartment, under the seats, beneath the wheel, in the trunk, nothing.

Nothing but Heather, blood pooling out from where her teeth should be, a microsecond in the rearview mirror. I stumble backwards out of the car, my ass hitting the concrete hard. I wait until I’m not wheezing anymore, until the air reeks again.

“Leave me alone!” I shout.

No one to hear me, or no one wants to. Behind me, a window turns dark. Tonight I’m somebody’s fear. The crazed hobo, making you check if you’ve locked the door.

Sarah’s right, we have to keep moving.

I run back to my room. I don’t even get hard when I hear Sarah’s familiar retch, our own version of a ring for sex bell. This dread has me swaying up and down like a marionette. Feels like Ritalin shakes. Her door is barely ajar, and I shouldn’t, but I need her.

I open the door. Sarah is bent over the sink, yellow-red bile streaming out of her, dotted in white.

Teeth litter the sink.

Sarah looks up. Vomit and blood streaking down the corner of her lips. Sunken eyes, gaunt cheeks, like her face is caving in.

“It’s you. Not Heather, it’s you,” I say. I blink hard, to see if this is just a different nightmare.

“Nothing has to be different. I made you forget her, I can make you forget this too.”

“The book, it’s real. Heather was with me, you took her place. You took her . . .”

I trail off as Sarah nods and grabs a tooth from the sink, plunging it into her gums. “They’re all that’s left of her,” she says, stabbing another tooth against her mouth. “Don’t run from me, Sam. You did it once already, and it didn’t do you any good. Don’t make it hard for me.” She licks her swollen lips. “I’ll always be with you.”

I run out of the bathroom, down the hallway, out into the reeking cold and into my car.

I drive off, hitting a dumpster on the way out and speeding through the trash explosion. I can’t keep the wheel straight, and the car barely stays within the lines. Road marks turn into suggestions, lampposts into comfort. I drive fast, anywhere that’s far and away from her.

Half an hour in, my fingers are steady enough to turn on the radio. To hear someone else would be nice. Sarah’s voice is the only one that’s clear in my mind. Everything else is a sonic splotch. No memories, no words, no one else but her, leeching off of me, eating away all that I am, all that I was. I don’t have any other nightmares, because she is all of them.

The radio doesn’t work. There’s nothing but static. How many days, weeks, months and miles have we driven in silence? We never heard the news, traffic forecasts, not even music. My parents, they’re an anonymous one-size-fits-all blur. Where did I live before? Is my name even Sam?

Heather, a surfacing contour in my memory. Her cascading laugh, whittling down on the phone. Her thumb, caressing the back of my hand, three strokes each time. All these things Sarah ate up are coming afloat, and I have to blink away tears to keep my eyes on the road.

Pain is caffeine, for a while, then my eyelids turn heavy anyway. The gas meter arrow points halfway down. I can’t fall asleep, Sarah will be with me if I do. Staring, devouring me until her teeth fall out and she puts them back, again and again.

I get the Ritalin from the glove compartment. Chew it up. It’s grimy and bitter and it will wake me up faster this way. Hours drag by. My already faint hunger turns to nothing. I keep driving these nowhere roads surrounded by pines. Should I find somewhere with people? Pay some working girl and sleep next to her?

No, Sarah killed Heather. No one is safe with me. I have to keep moving. Until she starves from my lack of sleep, or a vein bursts open in my brain.

Forced insomnia, keep me alive.

My body moves by itself, and it’s like I’m watching it from the outside. Hazy recollections of gas stations, paying with crumbled up bills and munching on the sugary snacks that keep piling up in my car. Faces turn featureless, voices flattened down. I try to imagine music in the radio static, but I can’t remember a single song. Day recycled into night, my car seems to sink so low into the road it’s like I’m driving through solid gray.

Is it the fifth day? Is it the sixth? I’m out of Ritalin now, moving on to an EC stack: adding ephedrine from bromantane to gas station coffee. The man behind the counter must have thought I’m a walking allergy. I had to stop a couple of times to barf the donuts and candy bars lumping my insides. Now I don’t stop anymore, and the window is splattered with the barely solid chunks of my digestion.

Night again. Snowflakes rotate around themselves. I feel an uneasy kind of peace, more like resignation. I barely notice the wheel spinning out of my hands and the car swerving madly.

I don’t hear my scream, only the thump of my foot against the door, throwing me into the passenger seat and smashing my head against the glass.

Sarah licks her lips in a shut-eyed shudder. “I missed you, and I was so hungry . . .”

“Sarah, please, let me go . . .” I say, slurring in insomnia.

Her sad smile I used to love so numbly, showing just a hint of Heather’s teeth. She shakes her head, both denying and wistful. “You were quick to forget me, once. Why can’t you forget her?”

I put the car in reverse. As it grumbles back to life, Sarah shakes her head again. “You’ll fall asleep again eventually, and I will be there.” Her voice trails off as she gets smaller and farther away, the headlights outlining her against the tree behind her. “Don’t go, Sam.”

“I won’t,” I whisper, and stomp on the pedal.

The hood smashes against her legs, crumples her down and folds against the tree. The whiplash snaps me back and forth, cracking something in my torso. I take a second to realize I’m still awake, lungs struggling to expand against bruised or broken ribs.

I pull myself out of the car. Sarah’s a few feet up ahead, curled up in a ball and moaning. No, vomiting, dragging her fingers on the pavement. I limp towards her until my knee buckles and I fall face-first. The asphalt feels like sandpaper as I drag my cheek across it, pulling forward on my elbows and knees, coughing saliva.

Sarah’s bent legs twist into place, like a dead spider coiling itself to life. She sighs, like the bones jutting from her arm are a mere inconvenience. No worse than forgetting to buy milk or the phone dying mid call. She retches again, scattering more teeth in a puddle of vomit.

“Just go to sleep, Sam,” she says.

I’m close to her now. Blood dribbles out of her temples, mingled with tar. She smells dead, but sweet. Perfumed road-kill.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I hear myself meaning it. “I have to let you go.”

I kiss her. She laughs lightly between my lips.

Then I palm her pooled-up vomit and began popping Heather’s teeth into my mouth, like Ritalin pills. It tastes like sour milk. My ribs sting as I tense up to hold my own guts in.

“No, no!” Sarah screams, unfreezing herself and reaching for the teeth. I cover the vomit puddle and shove it in chunks into my mouth, pushing teeth and bile down my throat. Sarah claws at my scalp, rips it open, pulls my hair and smashes my face against the ground, splashing vomit around.

I keep swallowing Heather’s teeth, until all I’m putting between my broken lips is tar and dirt. Sarah tries to put her fingers in my throat, and I bite until it tastes like iron.

Her weight is off me. I half-raise myself and stumble towards the car. I manage to get in and close the door, and I’m about to turn the key but I can’t find it anywhere. Lips burning, heart drumming, I wait for Sarah to open the door.

But she doesn’t. She’s curled up against the chipped tree trunk, crying with her head between her knees, clawing at her own hair. Sometimes, as she moans, she touches the inside of her mouth, the gums in which Heather’s teeth should be.

She looks up, pleading.

“I’m sorry,” I barely say.

The keys were next to the gas pedal. I turn the car on and drive away slowly, a cracked headlight blinking Heather goodbye. I wait until I can’t hear her crying, until I don’t hear it even in my head. I let the car slow down and veer off-road to a gentle stop.

The Hugo Awards have these things they call nominations tallys but they are commonly referred to as The Long Lists. These include the top fifteen nominees, and show who just missed making the finals. For example, Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Mothership Zeta all made the long list last year for Semiprozine.

One of the great values of these long lists is that it allows readers even more excellent works to add to their “to read” pile. David Steffen has worked to make mining those lists significantly more convenient for you. For the third year in a row, David has published a volume of The Long List Anthology. In this most recent version are included works from names familiar to fans of Escape Artists. Lavie Tidhar, Ursula Vernon, Caroline M. Yoachim, and Ken Liu, among a host of amazing others.

Alarm Will Sound

by Christopher Shultz

And we’re back. This is hour two of Talk it Out. I’m your host, Gabrielle Esposito. If you’re just tuning in, in our first hour on the air we talked at length with Mary from Poughkeepsie, New York, who has been having suicidal thoughts. She was able to talk through a lot of what’s been bothering her, and I think overall we left things in a good place.

Now of course, if this is your first time listening to the show, I want to reiterate that I am not a licensed therapist, nor do I behave like one. What we provide on this show is an avenue for people just to talk. I listen, and the rest of you, the audience, listen too, and we share messages of positivity and encouragement from you listeners, which you can send via email or post to our Facebook page. I always recommend that anyone experiencing things like suicidal thoughts, like Mary, or any other psychological issue, to seek out counseling. Now, Mary definitely wanted help, and we gave her several numbers of therapists in her area to call. My producer Michelle just told me that Mary was okay with a callback live on the air next week, so for those of you concerned for her well-being, be sure to listen in.

Okay, it looks like we have a handful of callers waiting in the queue, so let’s answer the next one in line. We have Charles on the line, from a small town in Oklahoma. Charles, welcome to Talk it Out.

Thank you. See, this deals with what I believe to be…some kind of force or entity or intelligent being, attempting to make contact in some fashion with my town. Maybe, even, attempting to take over my town. Now, I know that sounds crazy, but please just hear me out. Please don’t hang up.

I promise not to hang up on you, Charles. I do believe that you believe this is happening.

This is all actually happening. I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles as tall as Everest if you ask me to. Just let me explain…

Please, Charles, go ahead.

Okay. This all started with what we assumed at the time to be an unknown graffiti artist everyone called Alarm Will Sound. None of us knew if that was the artist’s name, but that’s what he or she spray-painted in big red block letters all over the place, just those three words, Alarm Will Sound. You know, like on emergency exit doors. The lettering was always crude, like the artist had a shaky hand.

That’s a very cryptic phrase. Do you know what it means?

I…I don’t. No. The wife and I and our friends are about as far removed from the modern art scene as you can get. Which isn’t to say we’re uneducated, we know about the big famous painters, your Picassos and Van Goghs and whatnot, and we knew about Banksy because we watched that movie about him on Netflix. But, you know, we didn’t know the who’s who anymore, locally or internationally.

What I’m trying to get across here is this: we were only aware of Alarm Will Sound because he or she—or it—was EVERYWHERE. Sometimes it seemed like he or she—I’m going with “she” on this one, I don’t know why, that’s just…it’s fitting. I don’t know.

Whatever is easiest for you, Charles.

Thank you. What was I saying? Yes…She was everywhere, all at once. And she was fast. You’d see the tag in a few places one day, and then the next, she’d’ve hit fifty other places over night. Now, that’s not so strange, I suppose, but looking back I know there was a kind of…I don’t know, um…mutual eeriness we all felt about it, but nobody really wanted to acknowledge it.

It wasn’t too long, though, that things started getting weird. Scary.

Case in point: I’m on the phone with Glenna—that’s my wife—she was at the grocery store, and we were talking about Alarm Will Sound, about how fast she is, and she stops mid-sentence, and there’s a pause. And I say, what is it? And she tells me she was looking at the side wall of the building where she’d parked, and she looked away for a split second, and when she looked back up, there was the tag, right there in front of her, ALARM WILL SOUND. She swears it wasn’t there not two seconds before. It just appeared out of nowhere.

Now, I’m a rational person, always have been. I complement Glenna in that way because she’s fanciful. And she complements me, reminds me to not be so buttoned-up all the time, as she puts it. But I default in this case, because I believe that the simplest solution is always the correct one, and in most cases I’m right. So I tell her, love, you probably just didn’t notice it before. The store’s a red brick building, and this artist paints in red, so it probably just blended in and you didn’t actually see it until just now. She concedes to that, and she starts the car and is getting ready to drive away.

Here’s where this particular part of this story gets really strange, because I cannot explain what happened next. I mean, I could—I did explain it away at the time but…

Are you still there, Charles?

I’m here. Yes…Now, I didn’t mention before that at the time of the phone call I was outside doing a little yard work, just some raking, you know. And I consider myself an observant person, overall. Now, I wasn’t looking anywhere in particular while I was raking, you understand. I’m not going to lie and tell you I was staring at the wall of my house the entire time I was talking to Glenna, because I wasn’t. But our house is white, you see, a lot easier to see big red letters across the wall…

I think you know where this is going. I hang up with the wife, look up…And there it is. ALARM WILL SOUND, right there on the wall, right under our bedroom window. Put another stack of Everest-tall Bibles on top of the one we’ve already got, and I’ll swear on those too. I am ninety-nine percent positive those letters were not there the ENTIRE time I was out raking the lawn. No, it was like…I don’t know what it was like. It was like…she knew we were talking about her. The artist, I mean. And it sounds totally crazy. And at the time, I did think it was crazy, because…well, I just couldn’t completely let go of the rational. Not completely. I held onto logic. Even though this…this defied logic.

But I was adamant about a reasonable explanation. I think I read somewhere once that people do that, that we cling to logic and reason and begin making excuses and rationalizations in our heads for the things we can’t comprehend, like a defense mechanism to keep us sane, or something like that. And I think that’s what I did. I created a scenario that made perfect sense.

And Charles, if I may ask—

Please just listen, I think I’m running out of time here—

You have all the time you need—

I don’t. You don’t understand, just listen…

I told myself there were two possibilities: Either I truly hadn’t noticed the graffiti, which meant my powers of observation were beginning to fail—certainly a possibility at my age—or, the artist had done it while I had my back turned to the house. So the writing Glenna saw at the grocery store had been there the whole time, and she just hadn’t noticed it upon first glance. Meanwhile, Alarm Will Sound tagged me while I wasn’t looking, and the timing of the two “events” happening side by side while Glenna and I were on the phone, well…it was just a coincidence.

That is very sound logic, Charles.

It is, but…That’s what I told myself, anyway, and I cursed and I got out the extra bucket of house paint I had in my garage and painted over the message before Glenna got home, because I didn’t want her getting anymore funny ideas about the whole thing.

But see, I couldn’t hold on to my logic and reason for very long. About a week later, Glenna and I went over to Jim and Lisa’s—they’re our friends—for a barbecue. Some of the other couples from the neighborhood were there too. And this one couple, the Brandons we called them not because it was their last name but because they were both named Brandon, told almost an identical story to the one Glenna and I had experienced, only they were both having lunch on a patio at some restaurant or other, sitting at a table facing each other, and in the blink of an eye—that was the term they used, the blink of an eye—they each saw the message “magically” appear on a wall and a telephone post, respectively. They were facing opposite directions, you understand. I mean, looking at each other as they talked, but you know, we notice things out of our peripheral vision. And—again, in the blink of an eye—the same blocky red letters just appear.

And just like Glenna and me, they were talking ABOUT Alarm Will Sound when it happened.

It was like she knew, see? She knew they were talking about her. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. But she knew.

Well, I confessed about the message I saw then, too. Glenna was a little miffed at me for not telling her, but she understood. It was my way, she knew that. And together, we told our tale, our impossible little tale. I don’t know why I was willing to give in, to share this story with my friends, as though we were kids around a campfire. Like I said, I’m always sticking to the rational, and I’m the last person to want to cause any kind of panic in people, but…I don’t know. In the same way I’m telling this to you, Gabrielle, and the rest of the world, it just seemed…appropriate.

We do appreciate you sharing with us—

At the time, it was appropriate, but now, it’s MANDATORY.

I do understand—

No, you don’t. See, when we got home from the barbecue, and Glenna’s all freaked out as it is, guess what we find as we pull into the driveway? ALARM WILL SOUND. In the EXACT same place as the one I painted over. The exact same letters, even down to the same EXACT drip mark coming off the W. It was like the message had bled through the three coats of paint I’d put over it. Glenna was in utter terror over this. I was too, to tell the truth.

Wasn’t long after that, the messages began popping up, well, like I said, everywhere. But everywhere times a thousand, you understand? All over the place. On people’s cars, on the streets, on trees, everyone’s houses. And not just once per surface. I’m talking like an insane person writing on the walls of their padded room, over and over and over, the same thing, ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND. I mean, our house basically looks red at this point.

And this is why this is so important, you see, because our local media, they’re acting like there’s nothing going on. There hasn’t been one single news report, one single newspaper article, no one radio DJ or Internet blogger or anyone has written anything about it. And speaking of bloggers, one of the Brandons, well he decided to start writing about it himself, since no one else would. So he set up a blog, he starts writing, pushing out these awareness pieces, trying to get more people to reach out to him and share their stories, so that maybe we can figure out just what the hell is going on, but every time he publishes one, it just disappears. Do you understand what I’m saying? It just flat out disappears. You can’t find it on the Internet, you search for it on Google and you get no results, you search for ALARM WILL SOUND and you get stuff about emergency exit doors and some avant-garde musical group based in New York. I don’t think they’re related at all.

We’re afraid. We’re all afraid. I mean, true to the message, all our internal alarms are going off. I mean, we don’t know what the hell is going on.

Because here’s the thing, and you may look into this, you may not, but I want to be upfront with everything, because I don’t want you or anyone else thinking I’m crazy. I know how all this sounds, but…the thing is, if you try to look up our town, Scissortail…you’re not going to find it anymore. It used to be on the map. It isn’t now. And, and…We can’t get out anymore. If you drive to the edge of town, it’s literally an edge, there’s just nothing, nothing but a big huge cliff, and the road just ends, and all over the edge of the road and the edge of the cliff, and all down the cliff side, ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND.

And I know what you’re thinking, this guy is just making all this stuff up to get on the radio. Scissortail never existed in the first place, and it’s just a matter of convenience he’s saying it’s no longer on the map. I’m just a big liar, right? I’m not. Take all those Bibles I mentioned before and place them atop my own mother’s grave, and I’ll still swear on them. I’ll do whatever you ask me to do to get you to believe me. We’re desperate here, we don’t know where else to turn, because it seems like every time we try to find help, all we get back is silence…Although that’s not even true, because all we get is ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND, and it may just be words but when you look outside and all the world is red all over, all those words bleeding into one another, smashing up against each other, it begins to sound like alarms, like…what’s the word…klaxons. That’s it. Klaxons going off in your head. ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND, over and over and over, and none of us…none of us…knows what it means, I, I…I can’t explain. Any of this. I have no logical explanations. I can’t reason my way out of this anymore…

Oh—Please, someone look into this, try to find out, we’re still here, it says we don’t exist but we’re still here, we’re still here, I’m sounding the alarm, oh Jesus, I’m sounding the alarm, is that what it means? I’m sounding the alarm right now, this is the alarm, this is the warning, ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALA—

Well, Charles, if you’re still listening, we’re sorry we got disconnected before you had a chance to speak with us, but do please call back and we’ll get you back on the air. And if we don’t hear back from you, well, we certainly hope that whatever’s been troubling you, it gets worked out soon.

Okay…Next we have Ronny from Schaumburg, Illinois. Welcome to Talk it Out, Ronnie…

“I started writing five years ago by participating in a weekly flash fiction challenge, and this story began as a 250 word sketch based on a photo of an empty swing.”

The Hugo Awards have these things they call nominations tallys but they are commonly referred to as The Long Lists. These include the top fifteen nominees, and show who just missed making the finals. For example, Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Mothership Zeta all made the long list last year for Semiprozine.

One of the great values of these long lists is that it allows readers even more excellent works to add to their “to read” pile. David Steffen has worked to make mining those lists significantly more convenient for you. For the third year in a row, David has published a volume of The Long List Anthology. In this most recent version are included works from names familiar to fans of Escape Artists. Lavie Tidhar, Ursula Vernon, Caroline M. Yoachim, and Ken Liu, among a host of amazing others.

From the Fertile Dark

by Rebecca J. Allred

As tendrils of spilled ink mingle with the pool of blood expanding around her knees, Charlotte paints the shadow child on a wall the shade of wilted daffodils. Upstairs, her husband packs his things, slipping quietly from her life even as the last of their children slips from her womb. There will be no call for the midwife who, with the blessings of the town elders, declared her pregnancy an abomination from the start. Neither will she seek the aid of the doctors from away. There is nothing either the ancient woman or the practitioners responsible for its inception can do to stay the flow of despair and failure seeping from Charlotte’s sex, and she is already intimately familiar with the details of post-miscarriage self-care.

Hands trembling, she outlines the shape of a girl, four years old, with soft curls that fall to her shoulders—an imitation of invented memory. With each stroke, Charlotte replaces the foul taste of Black Haw extract and Chaste Tree berry with the flavors of vanilla ice cream and birthday cake; the acrid scent of antiseptic and bleached linens with the fragrance of baby powder and warm milk; and the repeated pricks of needles that promised a miracle at the price of her friends and family with the soft ticklish flutter of butterfly kisses. In her mind, the short, hurried footsteps traversing the hallway are not the clatter of a runaway spouse, but an echo of a toddler fleeing bath time. Charlotte chases the phantom memory into darkness.

Deceiver…

Instead of condolences and comfort, they bring casseroles and cake. Pariah or not, Charlotte is a grieving mother, and the neighbors have appearances to keep. Charlotte receives their charity with silent gratitude, stacking parcels one on top of the other like so many tiny coffins. With the exception of answering the door to accept tokens of feigned sympathy, she resides in the nursery.

Curtains closed, shelves lined with little socks and shoes, pacifiers, and containers of baby powder, the nursery is an altar for an absent god. Tucked in a corner, a handful of plush characters peek over the edge of a bassinet, glossy eyes connecting the dots of rust-colored stains that trace loss across the floorboards like chalk lines on pavement. Charlotte covers the walls with the residue of wishes, adding a jump rope, toys, and a swing for the shadow child’s amusement.

Days stretch endlessly into weeks as time rushes past in a monochromic blur until the neighborly visits, much like the flow of blood that serves as a daily reminder of her failure, eventually slow and then stop altogether.

Behind the house, near the edge of the surrounding woods, a pair of swings twists in an early winter breeze. Unable to contain her grief any longer, Charlotte’s house invites the breeze to cleanse its stagnant halls, throwing open its doors and windows and spilling a kaleidoscope of sorrow into the night.

Charlotte gives chase, but for every lamentation recaptured and rebottled to nurture and protect, another escapes her lips, feeding the breeze until it becomes a gale. When it becomes clear her efforts are wasted, Charlotte takes to the swings. If she cannot stop her despair from taking flight, she will follow it into the sky. Charlotte swings up, up, up—toward the swollen moon as it drifts through the amnion of distant galaxies—and lets go. For a moment, she hangs suspended in the tempest. Then it retreats with all her cultivated misery in tow, and Charlotte plummets back to the earth to sow her garden of heartache anew.

“For what do you weep?” someone from within the wood whispers. The voice is low and dark, like distant thunder, and though it carries undertones of stealth and misdirection, it offers the first kind words Charlotte has heard in months.

“I weep for the death of my heart, that its ghost may forget how to love.”

“Even those who walk between worlds are haunted by the memory of loss.”

“I among them.” Charlotte rises, brushing blades of winter grass from her dress and steps toward the edge of the wooded area. “Who are you? Why do you speak with me? Do you not know that I am forsaken?”

“I am a granter of wishes. I can give you that for which your heart breaks.”

Temptation in the form of a flutter deep in the pit of Charlotte’s stomach draws her nearer to the shadowed wood.

“Nothing of such value is given freely.” Charlotte’s voice trembles with an amalgam of hope and fear. “What payment is due such a service?”

“Love,” the voice says. “Sacrifice.”

A vine wide as her palm and armed with thorns like fangs twists from the foliage into the moonlight. It lashes out, slicing through the thin fabric of Charlotte’s dress and leaving behind three sets of parallel wounds on her abdomen.

Charlotte cries out but does not flee. She touches the slits on her belly, smearing thick drops of blood against her shivering flesh. Fingers slick with red, Charlotte steps closer and attempts to wrap them around the vine, but it has no depth and passes through her grasp like vapor. She presses her fingers to her mouth.

“Love,” she says, bending at the waist and brushing her bloodied lips against the shadow, returning its kiss. “Love is sacrifice.”

The vine shudders. Its barbs scramble up the stem, coalescing into a razor sharp grin. “Flesh of your flesh.”

Lapping at the fluid coursing down the concave hollow of Charlotte’s stomach, the dark umbilicus sprouts arms and legs. They probe her wounds, diving between layers of muscle and disappearing into Charlotte’s body like smoke in reverse.

Her belly swells, the slits become gouges, and a sound like ruptured earth erupts from her throat. It is agony. It is rapture. It lasts forever and is over in the beat of a newborn’s heart.

Charlotte kneels, clutching her abdomen. The slashes have disappeared; tiny fingers trace their absence from the inside.

Deceiver.

Whore…

Words like wasps hover round Charlotte’s home, waiting for an opportunity to sting. Her much expanded midsection has captured the town’s attention, and to the hive of buzzing tongues, each postulate regarding her condition is less palatable than the last.

The presence of another draws Charlotte from sleep. Fearing the worst, that the elders have come for her and the unborn child, she tumbles out of bed and heads for the door.

“It is only I,” a calm, familiar voice reassures.

Charlotte ceases her escape and turns to confront her husband. He sits, hands clutching one another between his knees, on the edge of the bed they once shared.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to make amends. To beg your forgiveness and be a father to our child.”

Wrapping her arms protectively around her belly, Charlotte speaks the words she’s practiced time and again inside her mind.

“This child belongs to me and me alone.”

Her husband winces as if struck. “Not mine, then.”

“No.”

“I suspected as much. As do many of the others.” It is clear from his face that while he accepts this explanation, her husband had hoped the earliest rumors were true. That the miscarriage had been no more than a deception and the child inside her was the sum of their shared efforts.

“And yet my errand remains the same.” He rises and crosses to Charlotte, taking one of her hands in his own. “Forgive me, wife. I was a coward.”

A sensation like falling into the sky forces Charlotte to her knees. She looks into her husband’s eyes and hopes the urgency reflected there is not her own.

“I forgive you, but you cannot stay. The elders will never allow it.”

“It would not be the first time I rejected the will of the elders for the promise of a family.”

“That was different.”

“Was it? Tell me, wife. How came you to be with child this time?”

Charlotte pulls her hand away and returns it to its place upon her stomach which has begun to knot.

“Be it by medicine or by magic, it is the same in the eyes of the elders.”

Instead of words, a wail of agony pours from Charlotte’s throat and she curls round her tightening middle.

Her husband gathers her into his arms and rests her on the bed. “I’ll fetch the midwife,” he says when she’s past the first contraction.

“No! They must never see!”

“See what?”

Charlotte cries out again as another wave of pressure threatens to split her open. “Help me,” she pleads. “Help me, and you can stay.”

Hours later, Charlotte’s screams are replaced by the shrill cry of a newborn.

Deceiver.

Whore.

Murderer…

When they come to question her, Charlotte tells the elder’s vassals that, despite his rumored claims to return home, she hasn’t seen her husband in months—not since he left following her most recent miscarriage. About the infant sounds coming from the adjacent room, she tells them nothing, keeping the bundle of coos and gurgles tightly swaddled as they search the house and surrounding land time and again for evidence of a crime.

They find none, overlooking the dim, shifting outline of a man huddled in the bedroom corner. Charlotte too learns to overlook him, and in time, he disappears altogether.

As the girl blossoms from infant to toddler, Charlotte grows ever more pale, spending day and night watching her daughter play with toys inked upon the walls of their secluded existence. Her only regret is that, unlike the jacks and the swing, her daughter’s dark touch is unable to animate the other shadow child and grant herself a playmate.

Walking home through waves of winter ash, a bundle of groceries held close to her chest, Charlotte is confronted by a woman cloaked in familiar wounds.

“How’s your daughter?” the woman asks, cheeks streaked with rage.

On both sides of the street, people have halted their journeys to bear witness. Charlotte’s answer is tentative. “Well, thank you. I was sorry to hear of yours. I pray they find her soon and in good health.”

When she arrives at home, Charlotte is greeted by the sound of not one, but two children giggling. She rushes inside, terrified of what she knows she will find. Her daughter swings wide arcs across the nursery’s yellow walls, dusky locks trailing behind her like smoke. A second, unfamiliar shadow child pushes her as the original watches, silent and unmoving as a statue.

One by one, the town’s children vanish. One by one, their shadows appear in Charlotte’s home, the ranks of her daughter’s playground companions swelling into the dozens.

Deceiver.

Whore.

Murderer.

Witch…

Little more than a whisper, Charlotte watches as a mob gathers outside—larger, angrier versions of wasps equipped with more than mere stings. Near the back, draped in robes, the elders watch with a singular pious gaze.

“Give them back!”

“Come out, or we’ll drag you out!”

Someone throws a stone; it crashes through the window, and a river of children’s laughter leaks out.

“I hear them. They’re inside.”

“More lies. She must be destroyed!”

The children gather round Charlotte, pulling her away from the windows just as the first blazing torch sails into the living room. In the nursery, her daughter twists in the swing. Charlotte tries to gather the girl into her arms, but they no longer have any substance. The girl laughs and points to the original shadow child still inked upon the wall.

Exhausted, Charlotte sinks to the floor. This close to the shadow child, she can see flecks of dried blood admixed with the ink. Her blood.

The flames spread. They creep down the hall, a light made to devour shadow.

“Flesh of my flesh,” Charlotte says. “Love is sacrifice.” She presses her lips to the imprint and flows backward into herself. The children follow her into darkness.

Charlotte wanders the boundless forest in a veil of midnight, surrounded by giggles and rustling leaves as tiny shadows dart from tree to tree through beams of moonlight. Ahead, she glimpses a break in the dense timber and, beyond that, a memory of her former self. Its slight frame shudders, exuding a fountain of grief.

Charlotte calls wordlessly to the shadows and draws one to her breast. Then she moves to the edge of the night and asks the woman a question to which she already knows the answer.

Damien Angelica Walters has a new collection out now from Apex Books – Cry Your Way Home. Damien presents unease with exceptional craft. There’s a lot of non-traditional families in this collection struggling to survive in an uncaring world. There’s a number of young girls struggling with friendship and its collapse and the need to be heard and understood.

I love the ominous exploration of blended families in “Deep Within the Marrow, Hidden in My Smile” and the interaction of mothers and their teenage daughters in “On the Other Side of the Door, Everything Changes.” Grief is a common theme, no better presented in “Falling Under, Through the Dark” which bears the crushing weight of the loss of a child and the feelings of complicity in the guilt. – This one ran here on PseudoPod as Episode 510.

Probably my favorite of the collection is “Take a Walk in the Night, My Love” which nods to the quiet unreliability of a du Maurier character and explores gaslighting. You get your money’s worth with this story alone, making every other excellent story in this collection a true gift.

The Taking Tree

by Evan Dicken

I’m reaching out because I got no one else. Even my lawyer keeps asking where the bodies are buried. I wish I knew. Then I could chop the damn thing down, but the tree don’t work like that.

I see it sometimes–out in the yard, beyond the prison fence–waiting for me. At night, I dread the moment when the heater clicks off and all that’s left is the rustle of leaves in the vents.

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.

In my earliest memories, the tree was an old thing, dry as driftwood. The story was it’d been a hanging tree back in the day–men, women, even children had kicked out their last seconds under its branches. I used to play in the woods nearby, passing judgment on squirrels and starlings, the tree my executioner. Once, we caught a stray cat. I think it was the screams that brought my parents running. People say I killed them too, but I was nine for god’s sake.

The tree followed me to foster care, its bark the rusty brown of old blood, leaves plump and shiny. I would wake to it tapping on my window, wanting more, wanting me.

I had this foster brother, Raymond, used to hide outside my window while I was changing. One night, I opened the curtains to give the creep a real show. I remember him staring from the bushes, eyes like quarters, then he just disappeared, twisting away like he was on the end of a rope.

I ran to the toilet and vomited blood. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t mine.

Once, I saw Raymond’s picture on a milk carton and almost got kicked out of the house for laughing.

It got easier after that, especially after I turned eighteen.

Lots of men will follow a young girl into the park, some women, too. The tree would snatch them up, quick as a heron gulping down frogs. I’d stand on my tiptoes, fingers brushing the tips of their kicking feet, feeling alive.

Afterwards, I vomited blood, organs, even bones sometimes. I went in for an x-ray and the negatives showed ribs of interlaced branches, the faint shadow of my organs picked out like leaves against a starless sky, and there, inside my heart, an acorn.

The doctor got this funny look when I asked him to dinner. I should’ve paid attention to the news. Someone had taken blurry video of one of my “dates.” They had some bullshit name for me–Lady Death or the Sorority Strangler. The doctor recognized me, and well, here we are.

Tomorrow, they’re gonna strap me to a table and I won’t get up, I accept that, hell, I welcome it. I’m not expecting a phone call. Burn my body, donate it, dump it the goddamn ocean, I don’t care. Just don’t put me in the ground.

I’m terrified of what will grow.

Legal Tender

by Stephanie Malia Morris

We are women with money under our skin. A red rash of pennies peppering our ribs, dimes scattered across our bellies, a honeycomb of quarters sprouting between our thighs. The coins break out over our backs, fatten our wrists. Half dollars pave our scalps. We wear chokers of nickels.

The coins burn, like hot stones. Our fingers creak with the violent urge to scratch, to peel open our epidermis and dig among the follicles and sweat glands to where the coins lie, or down into the dermis and subcutaneous fat to where the coins are still soft zinc and copper nickel, not yet keratinized. Our mothers say, “Don’t scratch.” Most of us listen. But some do not. We see these women in the ER, the free clinic, on the side of the road, their faces shredded, hair wrenched out by the handful. We imagine how good the hair felt coming out, coins clotted in the roots, slick with gore, the metal glistening.

We contemplate the welts of our mothers’ coins, shadows beneath the long sleeves of their blouses. “Did you never get tired?” we ask.

And they say, “Of course we did.”

“Cover up,” our mothers say. Most of us listen, sickened by our reflections. Some do not. Our mothers send us a news story of a man who cut open his girlfriend with a razor and filled a plastic bag with dollar coins.

Our mothers say, “Don’t visit doctors.” They cite women opened up on the operating table, their bodies mined for silver. We ignore them. We show physicians our coin-spattered skin, answer their impersonal questions: yes, we break out daily, no, we don’t know why. Our physicians name over-the-counter antihistamines. We take our pills. But still, the coins spread. Our faces bloat with riches: eyes swollen purses, lips heavy as ripe fruit.

The day we find blood beneath our daughters’ fingernails, their calves split with scratching, we imagine the decades ahead: our daughters turning into us, our hands trembling, as our mothers’ do, with desires on which we will never act.

“How could you watch us suffer?” We feel our own calves, the scars that taught us obedience knotted and black.

“You think it was easy?” our mothers say. “When we wanted so much more for you?”

We too want so much more. But we are tired of wanting. The coins must end somewhere.

So we whet our razors, kiss our daughters’ slack faces, and open the peach-soft skin of their ankles to find the coins crusted beneath. Even unconscious, they whimper and toss. “Hush,” we say. “This isn’t easy. We wish our mothers had done this for us.”

Two Step

by Drew Czernik

I take one step, he takes two.

I woke up that first morning with the remnants of a nightmare in the back of my head. He was out there, coming closer. I blinked, rubbed sleep from my eyes and tried to scrub the nightmare from my brain. The sleep went, the nightmare didn’t.

I heard something, looked past Amy. Tyler stood beside the bed, tugging the sheets, the top of his head just visible above the mattress.

“Man’s coming daddy.”

I take one step, he takes two.

It was the same everywhere. People felt it; shadows in the back of their minds creeping closer with every step. Then the shadows began to catch up.

First it was the planes, empty ones landing on autopilot. Then they stopped landing and started falling. Commuters disappeared from trains, freeways snarled with accidents. The shadows were catching up. And when they caught you they took you. It didn’t take long to realize that the further you went, the faster they caught you.

And they always caught you.

The world slowed down. We stayed inside, didn’t move unless we had to. It didn’t matter, he kept coming. Every trip to the kitchen, the bathroom, every step. They all brought him closer.

We kept the TV on, hoping for an answer. You could see the fear growing in the anchorwoman’s eye every time she shifted. Finally, she stopped talking and just sat facing the camera, frozen. She was still there when the power went out.

I take one step, he takes two.

It’s been days since I saw anyone outside. The last was the lady three houses down, running down the road, looking over her shoulder and screaming something I couldn’t hear. She reached our driveway. There was a dark shimmer in the air behind her and then she was gone.

I wonder if that’s how it ended for Amy?

She left yesterday. After Tyler. We tried. We tried so damned hard. But how do you keep a three year old still? He thought it was a game. He’d run away, laughing as we chased him. Amy screaming, Tyler shrieking.

The last time, he got to the front door. He turned and giggled. “Man’s coming daddy!” He took one more step and there was that dark shimmer. His giggle turned to a scream and then he was gone. Amy didn’t say anything. She walked to where he’d disappeared, then kept on walking.

I didn’t bother closing the door behind her. Doors don’t matter.

I take one step, he takes two.

It’s just me now. Alone in this dark, quiet house. I’m moving again. There’s no reason not to anymore. He’s close. So close. I swear I can almost see the shimmer.

There’s a picture on the fridge that Tyler painted. It’s the three of us; smiling stick figures in thick blue finger strokes. I love that picture. I want to see it one more time.

“Christmas Present” originally appeared in the NAMELESS PLACES anthology edited by Gerald W. Page in 1975, followed by THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES: SERIES IV anthology, also edited by Page, in 1976. A slightly different version of the story was broadcast on BBC radio Mersey-side on December 24th, 1969, there read by Gavin Richards, produced by Tony Wolfe and with a special electronic score by Donald Henshilwood – and the story is thus dedicated to these three gentlemen. This presentation features audio production by your editor, Shawn Garrett using some sounds from Freesound,org and dedicated to Zoviet France, the sisters of St. Francis Academy and the 1971 film THE NIGHT CALLER.

“While the Black Stars Burn” originally appeared in the Cassilda’s Song anthology. It was reprinted in Turn To Ash, and is the title story in Lucy’s Stoker Award-winning collection While the Black Stars Burn.

I wrote “While the Black Stars Burn” while I was attending a winter MFA residency at Goddard College in Vermont. I knew I wanted to write a story evocative of both the Robert Chambers story “In the Court of the Dragon” and Lovecraft’s story “The Music of Erich Zann” but which was not a copycat pastiche of either one. The heat wasn’t working well in my dorm room, and my being profoundly cold and under-slept definitely influenced my writing!

While the Black Stars Burn

by Lucy A. Snyder

Caroline tucked an unruly strand of coarse brown hair up under her pink knit cap, shrugged the strap of her black violin case back into place over her shoulder, and hurried up the music building stairs. Her skin felt both uncomfortably greasy and itched dryly under her heavy winter clothes; it had been seven days since the water heater broke in her tiny efficiency and the landlord wasn’t answering his phone. Quick, chilly rag-baths were all she could stand, and she felt so self-conscious about the state of her hair that she kept it hidden under a hat whenever possible. She hoped that her violin professor Dr. Harroe wouldn’t make her take her cap off.

Her foot slipped on a spot of dried salt on the stairs and she grabbed the chilly brass banister with her left hand to keep from pitching forward. The sharp, cold jolt made the puckered scar in her palm sharply ache, and the old memory returned fast and unbidden:

This story was originally published in She Walks in Shadows anthology, eds. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles, October 2015 from Innsmouth Free Press. Prime Books issued the American edition, which is called Cthulhu’s Daughters. This will be its first reprint.

Some listeners will recognize characters and story elements from H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cool Air.” That’s because this story was written for She Walks in Shadows, an anthology of stories containing female characters from Lovecraft’s stories. All contributors to the anthology were women. She Walks in Shadows won the 2016 World Fantasy Award in the anthology category, and “Bitter Perfume” received an Honorable Mention from Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 8 editor Ellen Datlow.

The events described occur in America and are told from an American perspective. Being a multicultural society, it is not unusual for Americans from all walks of life to partake in diverse celebrations like St. Patrick’s Day, Oktoberfest, or Cinco de Mayo regardless of their individual heritage. Nor is it unusual for people of all backgrounds to enjoy themed activities ranging from Civil War reenactments, to Mardi Gras, to amusement parks styled after the Old West, etc. Therefore, events like the Gypsy Carnival are mentioned with the American understanding that these are themed affairs and not connected with a particular people.

Deconstructing Hillsdale

By D. Morgan Ballmer

What do you recall about the horrific events that unfolded in Hillsdale Heights on December 2nd, 2014? I remember thinking that the town seemed populated by ghosts, mostly. All over Jefferson County living room windows framed our friends and neighbors as they bathed in the cold glow of their televisions, transfixed by the ongoing standoff. The reports didn’t make any sense. Even when it ended, nothing made any sense.

The media attempted to paint a portrait of the gunman, Randy Hollstrom. They sprinkled buzzwords throughout their coverage as if ‘veteran’, ‘loner’, or ‘PTSD’ somehow explained what we were seeing. Our eyes screamed that the words we were hearing did not match up with the footage. Perhaps after so many hours our hunger for peace of mind outweighed our appetite for the truth.

There was no real way for the news to tell the story anyway. Think of those 3-D sculptures which appear as an elephant when seen head on, but take four steps to the right and suddenly it looks like a giraffe. Same with the Hillsdale event – you look directly at the facts and you will never see the evidence that matters. You have to approach it sideways.

One example, Randy’s son. Or, if you prefer, his lack of a son. Or perhaps the theory that he was haunted by someone’s son if not his own. Countless words have already been written about his alleged offspring. Was the boy kidnapped? Killed? Did he ever exist outside of his father’s imagination? Speculation on this point only diverts the conversation down one of several well-worn paths, none which answer the question.

No one knows if the boy existed. Randy loved him a great deal regardless. His final videos are almost exclusively about his son, which means the boy was real enough to him. Now forget the boy. Forget the dubious photographs, the questionable testimony of neighbors, and the illegible scan of a birth certificate anonymously posted online. Remove these distractions from your view and focus on the man himself.

Randy Hollstrom had a childhood replete with its own paradoxes. Hans Hollstrom, the family patriarch, was a part time house painter and full time drinker whose temper earned him multiple stays at the county jail. This seldom mentioned detail of Randy’s life emerged in an interview on the GhostRazor blog in May of 2016. The following excerpt is from an interview the site conducted with Wade Hollstrom, Randy’s older brother:

Wade Hollstrom: That morning we were sent to fetch some beer from the crossroads, ya know? A little spot with a couple mini-marts and a garage. Lots of snow that week so dad loaned Randy his coat and told us to get a move on.

GhostRazor: Randy didn’t have his own coat?

WH: Well, we were still growing up, ya know? It was hard enough keeping us in shoes that fit much less buying new coats every year. House painting doesn’t pay like that.

GR: If you were thirteen at the time Randy must’ve been ten. How did you buy beer?

WH: I didn’t say we bought it. We were sent to fetch it. We knew better than to come back empty handed.

GR: I see. Was it a long walk?

WH: About two miles. Of course, two miles on a country road can seem a lot longer with the snow. That day was cold. Like icicles hanging off our balls, ya’ know? Suddenly this old brown car appears from over the ridge and starts swerving down the road towards us.

GR: You’re out in the country when this happens?

WH: Yeah, nothing but woods and farmland on both sides. I pull Randy to the shoulder of the road because something seems funny, like maybe the driver is drunk or something. Sure enough, a few seconds later a stray dog comes running out from the fields. The mutt isn’t even looking. At that moment, it felt like I was watching a movie, ya know? Like, I don’t know where the hell this dog is coming from or why this car is out on the icy road. But I could see what was going to happen, right?

GR: Oh no.

WH: Pow! Right? That poor mutt goes flying like a bowling pin. Car didn’t even slow down. I look over at the side of the road there’s a dog shaped hole in the snowbank. Like a Roadrunner cartoon or something. We can hear it whimpering. I’m standing there kinda dazed like what did I just see when Randy bolts over to the snowbank. He takes dad’s jacket off and starts spreading it out on the ground. I start yelling at him “Don’t do it! It’ll be the whoopin’ of your life,” you know?

GR: Because of the jacket?

WH: Yeah! Dad kept it clean, never took it to work. But Randy won’t listen. He lifts the mutt out of the snow and lays him on the jacket. Then he grabs the sleeves and starts dragging the dog towards the crossroads.

GR: Did you guys make it?

WH: Yeah. Dog probably made it too, I don’t know. Some trucker saw us and gave us a ride to the mini-mart. He promised to take the dog on to the vet. Don’t know what else he would’ve done with it.

GR: And Randy was punished when you returned home?

WH: Yeah.

GR: What happened?

WH: Just like I told him . . . that’s what happened.

There are a couple of relevant take-aways from this interview. The most obvious is Randy’s compulsion to save a helpless animal. Twenty years later we will watch him deliver several children directly into police custody while a neighborhood burns. He will be called a deranged kidnapper.

Little attention is given to the physical abuse both Hollstrom brothers suffered from a young age. Such circumstances have long term developmental effects, compulsive and erratic behavior among them. Compound this with the stresses Randy later endures at the Second Battle of Fallujah and you have the recipe for “personal demons”, a phrase the media used as the cornerstone of their reporting. The news repeated this catchphrase so frequently that #personal_demons became a trending tag on several social media platforms in the weeks following the Hillsdale event.

Yet the official story does not make sense when examined. Below is a snippet from the Jefferson County Tribune which hits upon the commonly agreed upon facts of the case:

Former soldier and decorated war hero Randy Hollstrom was shot to death by police during the early morning hours of December 2nd. Officers initially attempted to contain the armed man within the Hillsdale Heights neighborhood on Chester Hill despite desperate pleas from parents who feared for the safety of their children. Hollstrom twice emerged from the depths of the neighborhood only to release several bleary-eyed children into police custody before retreating back among quiet suburban homes and tinsel-strewn lanes of the Hillsdale community.

“Our primary concern was the safety of the children,” said Lt. Kessing of the 13th precinct.

“He would come toward our line surrounded by the kids, always cradling one in the arm that wasn’t holding the shotgun. Those first couple of hours we had no clean shot. Once the houses caught fire our hand was forced. With the additional distraction of the blaze our marksman seized the opportunity to engage. Thank God no children died.”

Thank God no children died. Indeed. No mention of the three missing children that police never recovered that night (four if you believe Randy had a son). A year before the incident this same community of six hundred homes reported two cases of missing children. Were these custody cases gone sour? One parent seizing their offspring and fleeing toward a better tomorrow? Perhaps.

Twice in one year?

Consider too, the infamous Szabó video that surged to over thirty million views in the wake of the Hillsdale event. In it we see a disheveled Randy Hollstrom, a man whose azure stare is devoid of emotion. He sits at a cheap table, perhaps a third or fourth generation hand-me-down. He clutches a stained coffee cup with an unsteady hand. Behind him a pair of sliding glass doors barely reflect the glow of twilight. For fourteen seconds Randy clears his throat, shifts uncomfortably in his wooden chair, and stares at a point to the left of the camera.

“There’s something you all need to know about my son. It sounds insane, but hear me out. I know he’s real, and I think I know what happened. I saw something that really made everything sort of come together,” he says.

The timestamp on the video displays NOV 30, 2014, a mere three days before Randy will be killed by police. The quality of the video is poor, cellphone footage shot in low light. Randy absently rubs his hands together for a few moments before continuing.

“Most of you probably know about rohypnol, or GHB, or whatever they call it. The date rape drug. The one that can wipe your memory. Victims will wake up after being drugged and have no idea what happened. This isn’t crazy conspiracy stuff, it’s medical science. It’s a fact. So we know the brain can be affected in this way by a chemical. But did you ever wonder if maybe there are other ways?”

A sudden impact strikes the glass. The unexpected noise is jarring enough to make first time viewers jump. A small, dark shape vanishes from beyond the glass doors as swiftly as it came. Frame by frame analysis yields few clues. The most popular theory suggests that a black garbage bag, perhaps carrying nails, blew against the house. The explanation is supported by the fact that the home behind Randy (the same one that will burn down a few days later) is a bank foreclosure abandoned during mid-renovation.

Other online commenters claim to see a small hand. One describes it as “the hand of a child striking the door before being yanked back into the night”. The reaction we see on camera is instantaneous. Randy bolts from the chair and throws the glass doors wide. As he runs off camera he shouts a single exclamation:

“Szabó!”

The video plays another ninety-eight seconds of the deserted table and open doors before ending.

Szabó? A quick internet search reveals this as “a common Hungarian surname “. Amateur internet sleuths quickly formulated several crackpot theories over what this exclamation might mean. Serious aficionados of the case spent days reviewing the rest of Randy’s online videos only to discover the name is never mentioned again. This is a perfect example of why looking directly at the facts blinds people to the depth of this story. There is an answer to the Szabó question if you search the videos from another angle. It is found in a clip shot four years before the Hillsdale event.

Video Title: Hey Ho, Gypsy Carnival, Yo!

Date: 09/10/2011

The camera pans over a table littered with papers, coffee cups, dirty plates, and beer bottles. Randy is digging through the piles of refuse while the voice of the cameraman questions him.

Unknown Voice: Did you lose the flyer, man? C’mon! I just gave it to you yesterday. How deep could you bury it?

Randy: (Laughing) You’d be surprised.

Unknown Voice: If I miss Vayelle and her coven of belly dancers because of you I’m taking my Xbox controller back.

Randy: Bad news, I don’t know where that is either.

Unknown Voice: Serious? No, wait. You really lost my controller?

Randy: One thing at a time. First let’s find your belly dancers, then we’ll talk about the other stuff.

Unknown Voice: We should talk about personal responsibility.

Randy pulls a lime green sheet from a stack of papers on the table and thrusts it towards the camera. It is one of the few times his magnetic grin is proudly on display. The flier reads:

Unknown Voice: You found it! Now find two bucks for parking and we can roll.

Randy: Of course I found it. I can’t let my boy down.

It is not clear whether Randy is talking about a child or the cameraman when he refers to “my boy”. This is one of a half dozen instances in his video archive where the phrase “my boy” is used in an ambiguous manner. What is clear is that Randy attended the carnival in 2011, and one of the performers was Master Mesmerist Szabó. This is the only other occurrence of that name found to date in the Hollstrom videos.

Further research reveals this discovery is only a minor victory. Master Mentalist Szabò has no other known names. Nor can his identity be found through public records. Authorities in seven different states currently maintain open investigations into Merikano’s Travelling Gypsy Carnival, yet they have found no one to question. The company is not registered with any government agency. The members remain completely anonymous while nineteen outstanding complaints ranging from kidnapping to contributing to the delinquency of a minor currently languish in police archives. Meanwhile, Merikano’s Travelling Gypsy Carnival has vanished as suddenly as it appeared.

It seems impossible that such a large production could operate like ghosts in modern times. Surely a carnival requires permits to operate, liability insurance, payroll records, storage contracts for their equipment in the off season, and so on? There must be something police can trace.

There is not.

They have used a roster of fake names and identities when signing paperwork. Scouring the few secondary sources available we find the following modus-operandi:

The carnival is held at questionable venues open to operating outside of bureaucratic norms. Places like the Hillsdale Flea Market, firework vendor lots, or old race tracks.

Operations are cash only, no refunds.

Each event lasts a single day.

Advertising is done by word of mouth or printed flyers.

State agents auditing the carnival for regulatory infractions all claim that the carnival was in compliance, though no written records of a single audit have ever been located.

What about racial profiling? Regardless of one’s opinions on the practice it seems a small matter for police to compile a list of Roma who regularly cross state lines. Catch the culprits by process of elimination. That might work if the carnies were, in fact, Romani. However, as the blogger Roma_4lyfe observed:

Look people, when you go to a Renaissance Faire do you think the place is run by Saxons? Does the bartender of your favorite Irish pub talk like a Leprechaun? Then why would you expect this fly-by-night freak show to be run by Gypsies? As a proud Romani, I take it upon myself to check out these shindigs whenever they swing through town. For the record, Merikano’s “gypsies” hide a suspicious number of Metallica and Guns N’ Roses tattoos under those colorful scarves, if you know what I’m saying.

Really, the whole venue is straight up creepy. You always see kids at these things, but this one had a lot of them. Not happy, ride-drunk, cotton candy munching brats either. I’m talking about packs of brooding, listless, pre-teens aimlessly roving the grounds. Where are these kid’s parents, and weren’t they taught not to stare at people? Seriously folks, level up those childrearing skills, you’re giving us Gypsies a bad name!

It appears everything we know about the carnival is questionable, and we know almost nothing. Could the very existence of Merikano’s Travelling Gypsy Carnival be as questionable as Randy Hollstrom’s son? Now you understand why the story of the Hillsdale event cannot be contained within a two-dimensional newspaper article. The foundations of the deception run deeper than our modern minds are trained to excavate.

Sherlock Holmes is famously quoted as saying “when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. This style of thinking is difficult for a generation of eight-second attention spans. We are accustomed to searching for answers by the mouse-click. Finding none, our lazy minds reach for the comforting shibboleths of the day:

Deranged veteran suffering from PTSD.

Child abductor.

Armed.

Loner.

Disturbed.

Delusional.

#personal_demons

These are the refrains we hear whenever Randy Hollstrom’s name is mentioned. Refrains that remains suspiciously consistent regardless of the source. Words we embrace to sideline a harrowing event into a comfortable pattern.

Yet somewhere within the recesses of even the dullest minds lurks a suspicion that the official story isn’t quite true. Rather, there is much about the event we must completely ignore in order for all the pieces to fit together. Randy never physically harmed a child. On the contrary, he sent them directly to the waiting authorities before going back for a second group. As one famous blogger declared, “For a kidnapper he’s behaves an awful lot like a liberator”.

It is not the first time Randy acted as an emancipator. His trip to Merikano’s Gypsy Carnival made a brief splash on the Hillsdale police blotter:

BATTERY

On Sep. 10 two men were reported brawling near the Hillsdale Flea Market vendor lot. When officers arrived on scene they discovered an injured man accompanied by a minor female. The man claimed the altercation took place after an unknown assailant attempted to abduct the girl. The girl gave no statement. The man was taken to Highlands Hospital Center where he was treated and released. No arrests.

Those familiar with the Kertzman Report know the how’s and why’s of this story. Bill Kertzman went to considerable lengths to verify the identity of the two combatants, though he had no luck locating the girl. Ultimately his conclusions rest on the testimony of three sources who witnessed the altercation. All three identified Randy Hollstrom as the man who was injured intervening on behalf of the girl. One witness said the abductor was a dark-haired performer from the carnival. The same source said the abductor also seized a boy shortly before fleeing the scene. No other sources can corroborate that claim. Both other witnesses were unable to recall any details of the assault other than that one had occurred.

They could not recall any details – even though they were mere feet away when a violent fistfight erupted.

Once again, we encounter an astonishing rate of failure with human memory. As if somewhere within these connected events lurks a force capable not only of carving away the memories of the past, but also of editing events that are transpiring before people’s very eyes. It sounds fantastical, the stuff of pulp literature and old sci-fi magazines. Yet the pattern is clear.

No one remembers if Randy had a son.

No one can find Merikano’s Gypsy Carnival.

Two out of three witnesses remember nothing of the man who attempted to kidnap a girl less than twenty feet away from them. A man who would brawl with Randy, fracture two of his ribs, and flee the scene.

The girl made no statement.

There are a handful of astrophysicists who study the activity of black holes by conducting seismological observations upon the debris field that ring them. By examining how the matter at the edge of a black hole behaves certain deductions can be made about the unobservable stellar enigmas themselves. In this same vein consider: what is coincidence except the visible manifestation of machinations we cannot directly observe?

Can we, like the astrophysicists, deduce anything useful from the coincidences glimpsed at the perimeter of Randy Hollstrom’s story? Let us consider one final piece of the puzzle before attempting to reassemble it into a recognizable portrait. Let us talk about what the firemen found in the ruins behind Randy’s house.

Let us talk about the steel cages.

Popular sentiment holds that the cages found standing among the charred rubble were meant for imprisoning children. Fanciful versions of this theory speculate that Randy crawled through the bedroom windows of the children, shotgun slung across his back. Before the startled child could process the nightmarish vision unfolding before them he would silence them with threats or force. Then, out the window they would go, the fortunate ones to the cages and the less fortunate never to be seen again.

This version of events overlooks two major pieces of contrary evidence. The first, live news footage shows Randy directing his child captives into the custody of the police on two separate occasions. The second, police reports show that the cages were not located in the burned ruins of his home, but rather in the ruins of the abandoned house behind him. In fact, there is no physical evidence whatsoever connecting Randy with the cages.

But wait, what about the silver bracelet and cats-eye marbles? Children’s objects found within the very cages themselves! Is this not evidence that the cages were used to confine children? Perhaps. It is possible the cages may have been used for such a terrible purpose. Three or four children are still listed as ‘missing’ from the Hillsdale neighborhood. The fact remains, there is no reason to believe Randy was the culprit.

Then who?

Let us weigh the evidence meticulously. Randy Hollstrom did abduct eleven children from their bedrooms on the night of Dec. 2nd, 2014. However, until that fateful night he had no criminal record. As previously mentioned, Merikano’s Gypsy Carnival has a list of outstanding charges involving crimes against minors that spans seven states. More importantly we must ask “who had regular access to cages large enough to house human children”? Look again at the carnival flyer in the Septermber 10th video, specifically at the depiction of the ‘petting zoo’. Do those cages look familiar now?

Furthermore, Randy had a history of helping others regardless of personal risk. The carnival has a legacy of strange and disturbing events occurring everywhere it went, though people are unable to pin down solid facts. This pattern of missing data is the only hard data we have about the group. No one knows anything about Merikano’s Travelling Gypsy Carnival, except that they have belly dancers and animal cages.

And they have a master mesmerist.

Perhaps you begin to see the three-dimensional picture now. We will never have all of the pieces in place, but from a sideways angle the image is unmistakable. A mysterious carnival of dubious renown crosses paths with a veteran suffering from hero complex. An abduction is foiled, perhaps. Or maybe as Randy is beaten severely by an unknown carnival performer a young boy is taken in lieu of the girl. Possibly a son that is barely remembered?

Suppose the members of Merikano’s Gypsy Carnival are not satisfied with this. Perhaps their original target held a special value. Perhaps their pride can allow no transgressions against the group to stand. Something compels them to squat the abandoned home behind Randy shortly afterward and continue their child trafficking. This will be the beginning of their most masterful puppet show. One that will culminate in the death of the man who openly challenged them.

Did the boy escape when we see that tiny hand slap the sliding glass door in the November video? Or did they let him out to torment his father?

Or, perhaps the media is right. The astonishing amnesia surrounding this case and every other case involving the carnival is simply a coincidence. A mere footnote in another tragic tale of a damaged veteran struggling with personal demons.

This is far more comforting than the thought that maybe his demons were not personal at all. Maybe his demons are also our demons, and they’re still out there.

Click the Subscribe button on PayPal or Patreon and get access to some all the previous premium content. This includes our Trio of Terror and The Century of Horror and a number of other excellent stories and goodies!

]]>Click the Subscribe button on PayPal or Patreon and get access to some all the previous premium content. This includes our Trio of Terror and The Century of Horror and a number of other excellent stories and goodies!Click the Subscribe button on PayPal or Patreon and get access to some all the previous premium content. This includes our Trio of Terror and The Century of Horror and a number of other excellent stories and goodies!Escape Artists, Inc.yes3:164091PseudoPod 571: Hauntedhttp://pseudopod.org/2017/12/01/pseudopod-571-haunted/
Fri, 01 Dec 2017 05:01:53 +0000http://pseudopod.org/?p=3945http://pseudopod.org/2017/12/01/pseudopod-571-haunted/#respondhttp://pseudopod.org/2017/12/01/pseudopod-571-haunted/feed/0<p>Author : Sarah Gailey Narrator : Dani Daly Hosts : Dani Daly and Alex Hofelich Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis Discuss on Forums This story was originally published in Issue 31 of Fireside Fiction in February 2016 Click to view content warnings: Spoiler Inside SelectShow Domestic Violence Haunted by Sarah Gailey Read the full text […]</p>
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The Black Stone was first published in WEIRD TALES, November, 1931. It appears here by permission.

Andrew is one of the founders and proprietors of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, and has produced and appeared in films, radio dramas, games, music and audiobook projects based on or inspired by Lovecraft’s work, most notably the motion picture of “The Call of Cthulhu” and the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre series.

An audiobook of the Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft has been released and is available through the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society website. If you’ve listened to any of Andrew’s narrations over on the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, you owe it to yourself to grab this collection. The newest episode of the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre — “The Rats in the Walls” — should be released by Thanksgiving in time for some wholesome family dining experiences.

Also, check out the Cromcast, which is working through Howard’s impressive catalog of fiction.

The Black Stone

by Robert E. Howard

“They say foul things of Old Times still lurk In dark forgotten corners of the world. And Gates still gape to loose, on certain nights. Shapes pent in Hell.” –Justin Geoffrey

I read of it first in the strange book of Von Junzt, the German eccentric who lived so curiously and died in such grisly and mysterious fashion. It was my fortune to have access to his Nameless Cults in the original edition, the so-called Black Book, published in Dusseldorf in 1839, shortly before a hounding doom overtook the author. Collectors of rare literature were familiar with Nameless Cults mainly through the cheap and faulty translation which was pirated in London by Bridewall in 1845, and the carefully expurgated edition put out by the Golden Goblin Press of New York, 1909. But the volume I stumbled upon was one of the unexpurgated German copies, with heavy black leather covers and rusty iron hasps. I doubt if there are more than half a dozen such volumes in the entire world today, for the quantity issued was not great, and when the manner of the author’s demise was bruited about, many possessors of the book burned their volumes in panic.

]]>Author : Robert E. Howard Narrator : Andrew Leman Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums The Black Stone was first published in WEIRD TALES, November, 1931. It appears here by permission.Author : Robert E. Howard Narrator : Andrew Leman Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums The Black Stone was first published in WEIRD TALES, November, 1931. It appears here by permission. Andrew is one of the founders and proprietors of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, and has produced […]Escape Artists, Inc.yes52:493385EA Metacast: New Websiteshttp://pseudopod.org/2017/11/14/ea-metacast-new-websites/
Tue, 14 Nov 2017 05:01:02 +0000http://pseudopod.org/?p=3596http://pseudopod.org/2017/11/14/ea-metacast-new-websites/#respondhttp://pseudopod.org/2017/11/14/ea-metacast-new-websites/feed/0<p>Hi there! A short metacast to tell you all about our new websites. Transcript follows for those who who prefer to read along. Transcript (Alasdair) Hi there! This is Alasdair! (Marguerite) And this is Marguerite! (Alasdair) And we’re looking a good deal shinier. The EA family of podcasts has all new websites, thanks to Jeremy Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios […]</p>
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Hi there! A short metacast to tell you all about our new websites. Transcript follows for those who who prefer to read along.

Transcript

(Alasdair) Hi there! This is Alasdair!

(Marguerite) And this is Marguerite!

(Alasdair) And we’re looking a good deal shinier. The EA family of podcasts has all new websites, thanks to Jeremy Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios and Scott Pond for the incredible new logo designs! And to Marguerite for riding herd on the project for most of this year.

(Marguerite) Why thank you! So you may be asking yourself, why? I mean, we’re podcasts, right? Most of the time you listen to our shows, not read them. Well, we’re glad you asked.

(Alasdair) First off, we were a decade-old company with decade-old websites. It’s true – aside from maintenance from our heroic two-fisted IT Barbarian, Graeme Dunlop, EA’s never had a major upgrade. That won’t cut it for a digital publisher, especially one with 1900 episodes under its belt. It was a major undertaking, and past due.

(Marguerite) Plus now we’re in a great position to make that vast back catalog a whole lot easier for you to get at. But we ran into a chicken and egg problem – all the solutions we had in mind needed new interfaces and graphics. You probably saw that when our old logos got upgrades so we could be a launch offering at Google Play. But to make the leap to ‘Tubes and ‘Camps and ‘Fys’, needed a ground-up refresh.

(Alasdair) So, big thanks to Jeremy and Scott, and Marguerite

(Marguerite) (thank you!)

(Alasdair) and Graeme and the tireless work of the editorial teams and admin staff who kept this project upright and moving.

(Marguerite) And most of all, from all of us, thank YOU. Thank you do our donors and listeners, new and veteran, on PayPal, Patreon, Dwolla and more. Thanks to everyone who says hello at a convention, votes for us in awards and reviews the great stories we publish. Thank you to our authors, narrators, guest hosts and artists.

(Alasdair) And stick around for more.

(Marguerite) More tales to tell.

(Alasdair) One story told well. that’s what we do. And we promise you, it’s true.

]]>Hi there! A short metacast to tell you all about our new websites. Transcript follows for those who who prefer to read along. Transcript (Alasdair) Hi there! This is Alasdair! (Marguerite) And this is Marguerite!Hi there! A short metacast to tell you all about our new websites. Transcript follows for those who who prefer to read along. Transcript (Alasdair) Hi there! This is Alasdair! (Marguerite) And this is Marguerite! (Alasdair) And we’re looking a good deal shinier. The EA family of podcasts has all new websites, thanks to Jeremy Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios […]Escape Artists, Inc.yes2:303596PseudoPod 568: The Room in the Other Househttp://pseudopod.org/2017/11/10/pseudopod-568-room-house/
Fri, 10 Nov 2017 05:01:37 +0000http://pseudopod.org/?p=3341http://pseudopod.org/2017/11/10/pseudopod-568-room-house/#respondhttp://pseudopod.org/2017/11/10/pseudopod-568-room-house/feed/0<p>Author : Kristi Demeester Narrator : Jacquie Duckworth Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 568: The Room in the Other House is a PseudoPod original. The Room in the Other House by Kristi DeMeester I’ve counted the moments we once had over and over. Tried to hold them […]</p>
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The Room in the Other House

by Kristi DeMeester

I’ve counted the moments we once had over and over. Tried to hold them in my hands as if they were solid, but in the end, there is nothing except for the dark scar tracing against my palm. If I squint, it looks like a worm. If I squint, it’s almost like you’re still here.

We found the house when we weren’t looking. Driving along back roads because there was nothing else to do. We’d had too much to drink the night before and needed coffee and open air that tasted of rainwater and the cloying scent of rotting wood. You took the turns too fast, and I squealed and pretended to be angry, but you grinned through all of it, and it was the kind of dangerous smile I loved.

“What if we just never went back?” you said, but it was a conversation we were always having. There was the house we’d just moved into. The one with the extra two-stall garage and bonus room. Space for your workshop. Space for all of that scrapped metal you called a “project.” There was the dog we adopted together when we decided this thing we were doing was more forever than not. There were Monday mornings and paychecks and doctor’s appointments and phone calls. We were not the kind of people to disappear.

And then you did.

You drove, and I let my eyes drift closed and ignored the dark star of a headache that had begun to form. When I opened my eyes, I didn’t recognize the road. The houses were more spaced out. A bleeding away from suburbia into country. Here and there, barbed wire fence lined the road, but there was no livestock penned behind it.

“Where are we?” I said.

You shrugged. “You got somewhere to be, pretty lady?”

“Got a hot date tonight. I need to shave,” I said, but it was loud with the windows down, and you didn’t hear. If you’d heard, you would have laughed.

You should have turned around. When you saw the sign, you should have turned around.

These are the things I tell myself now. The ways I trace my way back to you. Small consolations for all of the mistakes we made that day.

“The hell does that say?” you said when we passed the first sign. Only, it wasn’t a sign. Not really. Two planks of wood nailed together to form the top of a triangle, the bottom piece missing. A phrase painted in green and in all capitals.

“It’s too small,” I said, and then we were past it.

There were no more houses. Only fields and trees and the sky gone dark overhead with the threat of a storm, and your hand on my thigh and slipping up and under the skirt I wore, and there was no one to see us under that broad, unending sky, and I unbuckled your pants and took you in my mouth, and you worked your hand against me, and I came before you did.

It had been years since we’d done that. Like a couple of horny teenagers who’d managed to steal an hour alone, all fumbling hands and wet mouths. I left your jeans unzipped, and you drove with one hand on the wheel, and the other still kneading my thigh.

“There’s another one of those fucking signs,” you said, and this time you slowed down, came almost to a full stop, and leaned out the window. There are times when I think that I reached for you then. My fingers grasping for your shirt, your arm, your hand, any solid thing that would call you back to me, but then my memory is made up of all of these small betrayals, and I think that maybe I didn’t.

“The Father of Lies,” you said and popped the door.

“Get back in the car. You’re going to get us killed. We can’t just be stopped in the middle of the road.”

“You see anyone else out here? Just hold on a second.” You leaned further out, further away, and I turned to watch behind us.

“So fucking weird. The Father of Lies,” you said, but you didn’t close the door.

“Probably some Jesus thing. You know. Repent ye sinners, and all that stuff. Watch for The Father of Lies. He’ll eat your soul,” I said. You didn’t laugh. You didn’t move. Something cold crept along the back of my neck, but I told myself it was the wind or a bug or any of the other things you tell yourself when you don’t want to believe what’s in front of you.

“I don’t think so. It’s something different. Sounds like a scary movie,” you said. You did move then, the door slamming shut behind you, but the engine idled, and you still looked at the sign and lifted your finger in the air, traced the outline.

“Would you come on already? Let’s go,” I said. You turned away then, your hands back on the wheel, and we were moving again, and I tried to settle back into the quiet I’d found earlier, but everything inside of me had gone heavy and light at the same time. Like iron covering something hollow.

“Jesus. They’re everywhere,” you said and pointed. Ahead, the road twisted away, but dotted along the black top where at least five more of the signs. All that strange triangle with no bottom, the neat, green lettering. The Father of Lies.

“Let’s just turn around. Go back,” I said.

“It’s fine. It’s some weird church thing. Like you said. Right?”

“Yeah. Okay,” I said, but you rolled up your window. I like to think you did that for me. To make me feel safe.

When I dream now, everything is green, but you are not there.

You had slowed down to go around a turn—the kind that kids call The Widowmaker and race their bikes down—when I saw the house. It stood just off of the road, was not set back like most houses in the country. The windows were busted out, the wood on the porch rotted and the steps sagging. Another abandoned house in the woods. The kind people write books about.

I didn’t see the toddler until we rounded the corner, the road still curving so you braked even more, and we were moving as if underwater, as if each movement was a slower precursor to something larger.

There was a large, spreading oak tree in front of the house. A monstrous, gargantuan thing that someone would tell you to cut down in case a nasty storm came through. Exposed, gnarled roots against dark earth. A lovely, terrible thing that cast long shadows.

The toddler was underneath the tree, sprawled on his back, his hands dancing through the air as if conducting music only he could hear. Under the tree, he looked fragile, too small to be alone, but he was alone. The house was empty, and there were no other cars, no adults pondering the landscape or taking pictures or changing a flat tire.

“Slow down a second,” I said, and my skin prickled. I craned my neck, looked back to be sure. The toddler still lay on the ground, his pudgy hands lifted to the sky.

“I got it. It’s not like I’m going to flip the car.”

“No. There’s a kid back there. A little kid. Under the tree. I’m pretty sure he’s by himself.”

Your mouth turned down at the corners, and you squinted up into the rearview mirror, and it’s these small moments I miss the most. How your face would move as you were thinking or how when you slept, there were tiny lines next to your eyes. I wonder how long it will be before I start to forget these things.

“You probably just can’t see them,” you said, but you slowed the car again, and I unbuckled and turned around in the seat. The toddler was still there, under the tree, but his hands were at his sides now and his eyes closed, as if he’d drifted off to sleep. Panic slick against my tongue, I watched his chest, my heartbeat slowing just a bit when I finally saw the rise and fall of his breathing.

“There’s no one back there,” I said. You reversed the car then, backed up so that I could see the toddler more clearly. He couldn’t have been more than two with the kind of curling golden hair that make women coo and run their fingers through it. He was dressed simply. A navy shirt and khaki shorts. A pair of dark shoes.

“Stop,” I said. The car jerked beneath us. You’d braked too suddenly. I think it was because you’d finally seen him, too. “You see? There’s no one else around.”

“Holy shit.” Your voice dropped to a whisper.

“Who just leaves their kid in the middle of goddamn nowhere?”

“Maybe they’re around back, or something?”

“We would have seen them when we passed the house. There’s no one out front; no one in back. There sure as hell isn’t anyone inside. You can see straight through the windows to the back. Empty.”

“Okay. Hold on,” you said and looked behind you, backing the car up even further to pull off onto the shoulder.

I’d looked away from the toddler, just for a second to do another sweep of the land, the house, to see if there was someone, anyone, we had missed. A blur of skin and hair hidden behind a tree or a flash of color, a shirt or a pair of jeans, against the green. It couldn’t have been more than five seconds, maybe ten, but when I looked back, the toddler had vanished.

I grasped your shoulder. “He’s gone.”

“What?”

“He’s gone. He’s not there anymore,” I said, and you peered past me, your mouth set in a thin line.

“He’s there,” you said and pointed, and my entire body sagged, the air rushing out of me. I turned to look. Through the busted out windows, I could see him. The toddler had gotten up and wandered inside the house, his chubby little legs jutting out from his shorts that were too small. I could see the dirt on his hands. It made me feel sick, and I remember thinking how strange it was, how awful to look at this child and feel as if I was coming apart, but then the toddler stepped away, and I saw what it was he was moving toward. A fire burned inside the main room. Flames leapt toward the ceiling and flickered just beneath the crumbling plaster.

“There’s a fire. Inside the house. Was there a fire before?” I shook my head. Couldn’t remember. There had been only those open windows like wide hungry mouths gaping around darkness. The trees. The grass. So much silence in this empty place. There had not been a fire, but it was possible I had not seen, possible that this was a new angle and I missed it before. Perhaps there was an adult here who had built it, someone to care for this tiny creature standing transfixed before the jumping flames.

“I don’t think so,” you said.

“I didn’t see…” I trailed off. The toddler crept forward, his hands outstretched as if to catch himself if he fell, but there was a part of me that saw it as an obscene mockery of prayer. But he was a child. Could barely talk. He wouldn’t be doing this. Couldn’t be.

“What is he doing?” you said and shifted forward so that you pressed against my back. This was the last time I touched you. The last time I felt your weight as something that was a part of myself. I’ve tried to call that sensation back, but I cannot remember anymore what it was really like. There is only the stain of it. A bleached out memory I cannot quite take hold of.

The toddler leaned forward, swaying in the way young children do when they are on the verge of losing their balance. “Oh my God,” I said because I knew what would come next, could see that terrible moment unfolding so that I could only reach for the door handle, my fingers banging against the metal and left aching, but I was too far away.

The child tipped forward, and I screamed.

In my mind, I still see those flames. Deep orange and almost beautiful. How they swallowed that small body in massive licks, the clothes, the hair, that smooth skin vanishing so quickly.

I heard you opening your door behind me, but I was moving, throwing open the rear car door to search for anything I could find that could smother the flames, and then I was running, an old towel clutched to my chest as I gasped out something like prayer or like please or like not yet, and I found that I was no longer screaming, my mouth opened wide, but the air around me plucked the sound from my lips.

I was up the front stairs and through the front door, which stood open on broken hinges. My hands shook because my body had memorized what it was I needed to do, but it knew what would come after, and the fear of seeing that small form shriveled and blackened was more terrible than anything I could conjure.

“Oh, God.” There was nothing else to say. Nothing else to do but run toward the wheeling column of flame, my arms extended.

I don’t know when you stopped following me. I didn’t think to look. I only know where I found you before I lost you again.

Before I threw the towel over the child, he turned to look at me, and I could see his face. A slight darkening around the mouth. His eyes so pale they were almost white, bleeding into the sclera. I thought he smiled at me. An impossible thing, but there is the memory, clear and bright, and even after everything that came later, I cannot forget the shape of his small teeth.

“Okay. It’s okay,” I said and threw the towel over him, ready to throw him to the ground and snuff out the flames. When I did, the towel met only air. It fell to the ground with a soft whump. There was no child there in that house. There was nothing.

I held myself still, a whine building in the back of my throat because I knew then that whatever I’d seen, it was wrong. Something that should not be, and I curled into myself, unable to leave this nightmare we’d stumbled into. A line of sweat crept down my neck, and the air tasted of something of foul.

I called your name, but the air was dead. Silent. No bird song or wind. Unnatural. I knew we needed to leave, get back into the car and drive away, not glancing back like Lot’s wife who died with the taste of salt on her lips.

But then I was trying to leave that terrible, empty place behind, and I was saying your name over and over until I knew that I was screaming again, but there was only the walls with peeling paint and exposed wood and gouged floors as if something monstrous had dragged its body over them.

When you answered, your voice sounded far away, but you were only in the next room. Down a small hallway in what looked like a bedroom, but it was too large to be a bedroom. The ceilings opened to the sky, and the floors seemed to stretch away and away. You faced the back wall, your hand against it as if I’d stumbled on you knocking.

“The kid. He disappeared. Just vanished into nothing. We have to leave. We have to leave right now. There’s something wrong here,” I said, and you glanced over your shoulder and then turned back.

“There’s a door. I saw it.”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to go. Now. Please,” I said. You lifted your hand and traced over the wall. I imagine there was dust on your fingers, some ancient reminder of what had once existed here, of whatever still lingered in the silence.

“Wait. Just a minute. Something’s here,” you said, and I remember how you stepped forward, how you pressed your mouth to the wall, how you opened it, your tongue trailing over that crumbling paint.

“Stop it,” I said, but you moaned, your back arching as if something inside of you longed to get out. I turned away, could not bring myself to touch you, to pull you from whatever terrible thing you’d found.

“I can open it. There’s a room there. In the other house,” you said, and you shifted forward, your fingers slipping under some latch I could not see. You grinned. Large. Toothsome. “See? Like the Father of Lies. Something you can see through and exist in at the same time.”

“Don’t. We don’t know what it is,” I said, but you were already through, and I tried not to think of how you’d mentioned the Father of Lies.

“Of course we do. It’s a room in the other house. I’ve already said.”

You went through the door, vanishing all at once into whatever lay beyond. I stood on the other side waiting for you to come back, but I could only hear your voice, the breathless, edgy rasp in it as if you’d been running for a long, long time.

When I heard the dog bark, I crept toward the door—nothing more than an extension of the wall that jutted outward—and called your name, but I did not look through. Not yet. I wonder if I hadn’t looked through, if you would have come back. But I did. And you were there, standing in the middle of a room with nothing in it. No furniture or curtains or pictures on the walls. Smiling and tanned and without the small paunch you’d been putting on over the past two years. Too much beer and too little exercise. The comfort of middle age and a stable relationship settling under our skins and leaving us as less than what we began.

Our dog—the Swiss Mountain Dog mix we’d adopted together because it was something that would belong to the both of us—sat beside you, her left ear cocked as if listening for a pitch we could not hear.

“It’s Nona. We must have left her here somehow,” you said, and Nona looked back at me, but it was not Nona. Not really. Her fur was a bit too thin. Too greasy looking. Her eyes lighter than they should be. Not the color of dark amber but of honey.

“It isn’t Nona. Come out. We have to go,” I said, and you scratched the dog behind the ears and cooed something at her.

“I’ll put her in the car, and we can go. Okay?”

My heart lurched, liquid and hot, in my chest. “No. We’ll get home, and Nona will be there, all curled up on her bed, waiting for us. And whatever that is—” I pointed at the dog. “What will it become once we get there? What will we have brought home with us?”

“Come in, love. Help me,” you said, and the dog opened its mouth then, but the sound that came out of it was not the sound of a dog. It was a child’s laughter. Then a scream.

“No. I want to go home,” I said, but my voice was next to nothing, and you turned and walked away, the motions of your body fluid and lovely and not the lumbering gait I’d memorized the night I fell in love with you.

The dog followed you, but its head still angled to face me, that terrible mouth still open as you turned toward some hallway I couldn’t see, and then you were gone.

I waited there outside of the door until it was dark, a damp chill creeping over my skin. I whispered your name. Over and over until it was a word I no longer recognized as something that had once belonged to me. I clenched the handle of the door tight enough to cut into the soft flesh of my palm. The scar has become a constant reminder that you have fallen into a place I cannot find.

Later, there were police officers. Your mother flew in from Arizona and we sat together at the little table you and I bought at the antique store and drank cup after cup of coffee as she asked the same questions over and over.

Why can’t they find him? How can an entire house just vanish? No one’s ever heard of anything called The Father of Lies. There are no signs about it anywhere. Not like you said. Are you sure it was a house? Are you sure of where it was? Are you sure?

Always, I had the same answers, the same repeated phrases that added up to less than nothing. Her eyes and the thin line of her mouth grew harder every day until she left without hugging me goodbye.

The police asked those same questions, but with more technicalities. Was he unhappy? Had you argued recently? Was there any reason to believe he would have harmed himself? Are you sure of where the house was?

They searched the car. Our house. They interviewed everyone, asking what kind of person I was, if there was any reason to believe I could have committed some kind of violence against you.

After a year, they stopped asking, and you became another body vanished. Another person eaten by things we’ll never understand. And I’ve been waiting. All of this time. So many nights passing as I stare at the shadows on our ceiling and wait for the feeling of you pulling back the comforter to climb in beside me, the deep smell of your skin, but I am alone in this house that we found, the start of our life together thrown into this unnatural stasis.

It has been a year and a half since you walked into that room in the other house. The house I cannot find, on a road that doesn’t seem to exist. I’ve researched The Father of Lies but there’s nothing on the Internet except for thousands of entries about a Bible verse, but none of it adds up to anything that will bring you back. Nothing in any of the libraries I’ve visited, with their gray-haired ladies who twist up their mouths when I ask them if they’ve ever seen anything like that before.

I am different now. Thinner. The planes of my face are sharp and hungry. My hair cropped close so that I don’t have to brush it. I do not think you would fall in love with me if you saw me now.

It has been a year and a half of learning how to navigate around the space you left.

When the door appears in our house it is winter. A thin crust of snow lies over dead earth. There is a sky that looks drained of color, caught between gray and white. I am looking for the spare set of sheets we’d bought when I find it. Standing no taller than my shoulders and narrow, hiding in a place where there has never been a door before.

I know now that you are trying to find a way back to me.

I throw open the door and peer inside. It is a room I’ve seen before. In the other house. The one I cannot find.

The room in the other house is dark. Empty. I sink to the floor, clinging to the knob. You are not there. After all this time, you are not there.

“You have to be here,” I say into the darkness, and I hear something shift. A soft exhalation. A sound that could have been a sigh.

You do not emerge from the shadows, do not come rushing forward with arms outstretched, and I bite my wrist so I will not sob.

But then there is your voice, gentle and sweet, and you speak to me from the darkness, and the door seems to open wider, the whole world spilling forward.

“Where have you been? How did I lose you?” you say, and I cry out then, my hands trembling as I inch myself toward the threshold.

“Come out. Please. Follow my voice. I’m here,” I say.

“Come through so I can see you. I need to see you. Your face.”

Still, I see nothing in that room. Nothing that could be you, but your voice goes on and on. There is nothing else I want to hear.

“Come through the door. I’ve missed you so much,” you say.

I close my eyes. Extend my hands so they are inside the room where you were lost. The air is damp, and I hold my hands out to you, palm up, as if in supplication.

I lean forward and into the darkness breathe one word. I hope it will be enough.

]]>Author : Kristi Demeester Narrator : Jacquie Duckworth Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 568: The Room in the Other House is a PseudoPod original. The Room in the Other House by Kristi DeMeester I’ve coun...Author : Kristi Demeester Narrator : Jacquie Duckworth Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 568: The Room in the Other House is a PseudoPod original. The Room in the Other House by Kristi DeMeester I’ve counted the moments we once had over and over. Tried to hold them […]Escape Artists, Inc.yes35:193341PseudoPod 567: Passoverhttp://pseudopod.org/2017/11/03/pseudopod-567-passover/
Fri, 03 Nov 2017 16:29:28 +0000http://pseudopod.org/?p=3323http://pseudopod.org/2017/11/03/pseudopod-567-passover/#respondhttp://pseudopod.org/2017/11/03/pseudopod-567-passover/feed/0<p>Author : Caspian Gray Narrator : Elie Hirschman Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 567: Passover is a PseudoPod original. Passover by Caspian Gray One day there came a body that didn’t burn. Tomek found her, because he was young, and because it was his job only to […]</p>
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Passover

by Caspian Gray

One day there came a body that didn’t burn. Tomek found her, because he was young, and because it was his job only to clean the ovens, not to fill them. The body was covered in ash, streaked with it, but the hair wasn’t even singed. Worse, it was a naked woman. She would have been beautiful if he had found her anywhere else.

Tomek screamed.

The two men nearest him–friends of his father, both of them–came running. No one from the pens ever escaped, but there was always that threat. Even working in the rooms that held the ovens, you couldn’t forget the threat of them.

“I’m sorry,” said Tomek, when the men looked at him. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing,” Waclaw repeated. “So don’t scream about it.”

Tomek nodded, trying to block their view into the oven with his body. The men paid him no attention. They had work to do of a more difficult, complicated nature than merely cleaning up.

Alone again, Tomek brushed the ash off her face, but not off her freckled breasts or the rest of her body. The steam of his breath in the autumn air obscured her each time he exhaled.

There must have been some trick of the oven, of the way the bodies were situated, some air pocket that the fire didn’t eat. There must have been a reason that she didn’t burn. The right thing to do would have been to finish clearing out the rest of the ash and the bone shards and leave her pressed against the wall, waiting for more bodies to be crammed in next to her.

Instead he leaned close and exhaled a puff of air against her face, dislodging some of the ash in her eyelashes. Her skin wasn’t even hot to the touch.

“Excuse me,” said Tomek, as he would to someone alive. The corpse did not reply.

He realized, aware of his own absurdity, that he wanted to bury it. Any woman who could survive the journey and the sorting and the pens long enough to make the ovens, and then emerge from the flames intact, deserved a kind of burial. He’d never heard of such a thing.

Night would be on them soon. The soldiers would come and tell him to go home; they didn’t like anyone to be outside at night. Tomek had heard that other places didn’t sleep, that the ovens worked day and night, but that was not how things were done here. They were respectable people who went home and slept when the day ended.

So Tomek buried the woman in ash again and then cleaned around her slowly, something he’d never dared to do before. He considered it an act of courage not to work as fast as he could. He did not think about what he would have to do next.

Waclaw told his father about the scream. His father didn’t say anything, but Tomek could tell by the looks his father gave him as they walked home. They took the long way, around the copses of trees that used to be the forest, so that they wouldn’t have to see the pens.

“I’m sorry,” said Tomek.

His father looked down at him. “For what?”

“Nothing.”

“You should be careful,” said his father. “These are delicate times.”

They did not discuss work at home in front of Tomek’s mother and his sisters, but in many ways things were better now than before the soldiers came. There was always work, even for the village’s youngest men. The soldiers brought the opportunity to buy food and alcohol that was never available before. His sisters said they were a rich family now, that they would have to marry outside the village because they had grown used to such an extravagant life. They laughed when they said such things.

Tomek washed his hands and his face, then changed his clothes.

His sisters filled the room with jokes and conversation. They were beautiful girls. Back when Tomek attended school, some of his friends had always walked him home, just to get glimpses of them. Being with them now made his stomach twist up inside for reasons he did not completely understand. He had already decided that he himself would marry a girl from outside the village, a girl from very far away, and then instead of bringing her home Tomek would go to her and live there. It was not a very manly desire.

The soldiers were not as strict about curfew in the village as they were to the people in the pens. Tomek never broke curfew, but Konstancja, the oldest of his sisters, did. If sweet, pretty, vapid Konstancja could do it, then sneaking out without attracting attention must be easy.

Still, it took longer than he thought it would to find a shovel in the dark.

The soldiers did not patrol the ovens in the daylight very often. No one here had ever tried to shut them down. Even if some of the villagers did have the heart to fight, the ovens would not take priority over the pens, or over the showers, or over the barracks.

Tomek went through the trees instead of taking the road. When he was as close to the ovens as he could get without leaving cover, he squatted in the underbrush and waited. No jeep went by, no foot patrol. He was sure that one had to be on its way, and the longer he waited the more it seemed that if he went out now, one of them would come upon him.

Still, there was nothing. Perhaps there were no patrols at all.

He ducked low and crossed the road, then crept along towards the ovens.

Nothing.

Tomek went to the oven at the end of the row, leaving the door to the crematorium barely ajar. If a patrol came by now, nothing would look amiss.

He swept away ash in the dark, trying to brush his fingers against the soft grit of her freckled skin.

There.

She was a little bit warm now. The ash must have insulated the embers. He took hold of her wrists and dragged her out of the oven and onto the floor. Her body made little swishing, sighing sounds against the thin carpet of ash he could never completely sweep away.

If he were caught in the road now with the body of the woman, there would be no explanation. Whatever he was doing, it was wrong. Even to himself there was no justice in it, only whim. Again he waited, just inside the door of the crematorium, clutching the body close to his chest.

No patrol. Nothing.

He pushed the oven door open with his shoulder and did not try to close it again. He dragged her as quickly as he could, keeping his eyes on the road and away from her nakedness. She was not light.

As soon as they were back beneath the cover of the woods he stopped again, afraid of alerting someone, anyone, by dragging her through the dead leaves. There was no one. Perhaps it wasn’t a whim after all, to get so far without being caught. Perhaps all of them deserved quiet burials, instead of the indignity of the ovens and the mass graves.

He waited for less time at the edge of the woods. A patrol coming by and spotting him did not seem so likely now that he had been out for what felt like hours. Tomek picked her up, though her weight made it difficult–if dignity was the point of burying her, dragging her through the dirt first could not be right. He managed her, like a groom carrying a bride across the threshold, with the shovel handle nestled between her breasts.

When he was out of sight of the road he started digging. The sound was louder than he’d expected. Some of the tree roots were too thick to hack through with the shovel blade. He looked over at her; the moonlight filtered through tree branches shifting in the wind, making her chest seem almost to move.

The grave was embarrassingly shallow, but with every breath of wind and crackle of leaves Tomek panicked.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured to the woman as he dragged her into the grave and then tried to arrange her limbs within it. He prayed for a moment over her, not a proper prayer because he could not summon the words. Then he covered her with dirt again, trying not to look as he buried her face.

He went home exhausted but satisfied, feeling that he had finally done something worthwhile.

There was murmuring at work the next day, because the crematorium door was left open. If the soldiers said anything about it Tomek didn’t hear, but Waclaw mentioned it, in a tone that was tight with irritation.

“Be more careful,” he growled at everyone, and at Tomek in particular, because he was the one cleaning last night, and because he had gone home before the job was finished. Tomek looked down at his grimy, ash-covered shoes and said nothing. Wac?aw glared at him as though this was an admission of guilt, then moved on.

“Waclaw has his reasons,” said Tomek’s father as they ate their soup together in the fields, facing away from the ovens and the pens. Tomek tried not to look at the ash trapped underneath his fingernails as he ate. “He didn’t used to be such a nervous man.”

But Tomek didn’t think of Waclaw as nervous, he thought of him as dour and angry.

“Will this ever be over?” Tomek asked.

“What?” asked his father.

“This,” said Tomek, making his voice as wide and meaningful as possible.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

They finished lunch. Tomek wasn’t hungry afterwards, but he felt empty just the same.

He sneaked out again that night. Tomek wanted to put flowers on the grave, but it was too late in the autumn for such gestures, so he settled for small branches wreathed with bright red and orange leaves. It was frivolous. It was stupid, too, but he felt that somehow he should apologize for the grave, and the dragging, and for the fact that she had ended up in the ovens in the first place.

The grave was empty. The dirt had been shuffled and piled up alongside the hole. Each vein in Tomek’s body beat with fear. He had not hidden her well enough, and the soldiers had come and dug her up.

Someone coughed behind him.

Tomek dropped the bright leaves and spun around. The woman was standing there, still naked, with hair as dark as dirt and skin pale in the moonlight.

“Oh,” said Tomek.

The woman coughed again. She looked sick and insubstantial.

“Are you alright?” Tomek asked. “I thought you were dead. I’m so sorry, I was just trying to help.”

The woman sank slowly to the ground and then sat there, slumped.

“Are you hungry?” asked Tomek. “Are you thirsty? Are you…alive?”

She held up a hand and opened her mouth to speak, but only coughed again. She looked at her mud-streaked hands with wonder.

“I’m still here,” she croaked. “I don’t know.”

Tomek was silent.

Her face crumpled, and he thought she was going to cry.

“Please,” said Tomek. “Should I get you some water?” They always brought the sick and the wounded water. Even from the pens they could occasionally hear voices pleading for something to drink.

“I’m not thirsty,” she whispered. Then she looked at him. Tomek stood very still. Her eyes were like wolf eyes, and his heart sped.

“Did you rescue me?” she asked.

Tomek shook his head. “I mean, I took you out of the ovens, but you’d already…you’d already rescued yourself.”

Tomek looked at her and shrugged. Konstancja looked beautiful tonight; her hair was mussed and in the halflight she looked like a silent film star. Tomek was unsettled to realize that she was a woman, not only his sister.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Konstancja pressed, laughing.

“No,” said Tomek.

“But you were seeing a girl, weren’t you?”

Tomek paused. “Yes.”

“Oh, good.” Konstancja laughed. “I was with a man, you know. He says that when his business is finished here he’ll take me with him.” She sighed almost ruefully. “We’re in love.”

“That must be…nice.”

“It isn’t, but it’s better than anything else.”

Tomek shrugged. Konstancja ruffled his hair as if he was a child again.

“You’re a good boy,” she said suddenly. “You’ll grow up to be a good man, won’t you?”

“I’m already a man,” said Tomek.

She kissed his forehead. “Then stay good.”

“Of course I will,” he said, but Tomek thought about the ash he was always scrubbing out of the creases in his flesh.

Tomek worked too slowly the next day. Waclaw yelled at him three times, until Tomek’s father told him it was enough. Fear and unknowing kept Tomek’s attention. Nothing he was asked to do seemed important by comparison. Probably the woman was dead by now, but there was a part of him that doubted it. To survive so much only to die afterwards was ridiculous. The world might be cruel, but Tomek could not bear for it to be ridiculous.

At dinner he took extra food and put it in his pockets, and at night he filled a canteen with water and went out again to her little copse of trees.

The woman wasn’t naked anymore.

“Where did you get that?” he asked, pointing to the man’s shirt that hung down to her thighs.

The woman plucked at the stained cloth. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I brought you some water,” said Tomek. “I brought you some food.”

She shrugged. “I don’t need anything.” She sketched patterns into the dirt instead of looking at him.

“You shouldn’t stay here. The soldiers will kill you if they find you.”

She laughed a little bit. “The soldiers are why I’m staying.” She wiped out her drawings and started new ones. “They won’t kill me. They won’t find me.”

Tomek put the food and the canteen down. “I’ll leave these for you,” he said. “If you change your mind about wanting them.”

She looked up at him with her wolf eyes.

“Before you had the ovens,” she said, “what did you do with the bodies?”

Tomek was quiet. “We buried them,” he said finally.

“Where?”

He pointed to the fields past the ovens. “There. Grass grows over them now, but you’ll be able to tell.”

She nodded and turned her attention back to her drawings. “Why?” Tomek asked. “Why does that matter?”

She sketched a long line like a river, and for a moment Tomek thought she was looking at a map. He took a step closer to her, and she scuffed it out.

“You’re not so bad,” she offered. Tomek reached out his hand, to touch her and perhaps to make her understand, or perhaps only to see if she was real, but she brushed his touch away. Her skin was as cold as the air.

Konstancja would not stop singing. At first her family teased her about it, then they grew annoyed, but her happiness remained, a delicate bird that Tomek was afraid might escape if they left the door to its cage open.

“We’ll leave soon,” she whispered to Tomek. “I will miss you, and I will miss everyone else, but I am so happy to leave.”

Tomek wished that her lightness could carry him away, but the thought of the girl in the woods was too heavy for him to escape.

By the third day, Tomek was back to working as strongly as before. Even Waclaw could find no fault with him. Each day he did not visit the woman in the woods, it eased his heart to imagine that she had fled. But each night he returned, she was there.

One night, she asked his name.

“Tomasz,” he said. After a moment, “Tomek. No one calls me Tomasz.”

She made a purring sound low in her throat.

“It is a good name,” she decided. “Tomek, can I trust you?”

“I haven’t told anyone about you yet.” He didn’t mean to say ‘yet,’ but the word came out of his mouth unbidden. Who was there to tell?

She waved his words away. “I do not mean about such things as that. If I tell you to do something, will you do it?”

Tomek looked down at his feet. “Perhaps.”

“If I told you to come and see me on a certain night, would you?”

Tomek nodded.

“Then when the moon is full,” she said.

So she was a witch. Though Tomek had suspected it, the admission was difficult to hear.

“I would like you to see us rise,” she said. “I would like for you to not be hurt.”

A tiny part of Tomek’s heart died as he realized he would have to betray her.

His father made him tell the story twice over their lunch, constantly looking about them to see that no one was watching.

“You have helped one of them to escape,” his father said at last. “If the soldiers find out.”

“She isn’t one of them,” said Tomek. “She might have been, once. Now she is a witch, or a dead thing.” He did not have the vocabulary to describe her, to explain her cold touch and her contempt for food and the way her body had not burned.

“Of course it would have burned,” said Tomek’s father. “She must have escaped from the pens and hidden in the ash. You were a fool to believe her. You were a fool to carry her out.”

Tomek’s father hadn’t seen. He couldn’t know.

“You will take me there tonight,” said his father. “We will fix this problem.” His face was small and tense, and suddenly Tomek was desperate to apologize. The words would not come. He did not know what else he could have done.

Sneaking out with his father was different. His father was small, like his son, but to Tomek every step his father took was deafening.

His father was also cautious, as cautious as Tomek had been the first night–a caution he had dropped with time, as he had realized that the soldiers were not omniscient.

When they got to the woods, the woman was not there. Nor were the small piles of food, which until now had gone untouched even by the insects. Only the canteen was still there, half-covered in underbrush as though she had kicked it out of her sight. His father did not see the canteen; Tomek did not point it out. He did not want to get in trouble for stealing, too.

“Have you lied to me?” Tomek’s father asked.

Tomek swallowed. “No.”

“Have you lied to me?” His father repeated, his voice clear and even and terrifying.

“No,” said Tomek. They were so loud in the night of the woods.

“Then we will go home,” said his father. “The woman has fled. We will never speak of her again.”

The full moon came and went. Tomek did not go to meet the woman in the woods.

A month passed, terrible in the quiet way that things had been terrible ever since the soldiers came. They were putting more and more people in the pens, and by virtue of their number their noise was impossible to ignore. Tomek felt sick every time he passed them, but less sick working in the ash. He could pretend, very hard, that the two things were not related.

Konstancja came and went at night, and it seemed that Tomek was the only one who knew why, though her joy was obvious to everyone. Spring was still so far away.

Tomek watched the phases of the moon, though he pretended to himself that he did not. When the full moon came again he went back to the woods. Perhaps he could bring the canteen home. It felt good to disobey the soldiers, to prove that their curfews did not have to mean anything to him. Tomek imagined that the euphoria of disobedience was part of what it meant to be a man.

She was there when he returned, half hidden in the underbrush.

“You are late,” she said.

Tomek was not surprised to see her. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, and realized that he was.

She shook her head. “Let me touch your hand.”

He hesitated only a moment before holding it out. She was a witch, or a ghost, or a creature of some kind, yet he did not fear her as he had always imagined he would fear a monster.

Her skin was so cold.

“I need some of your blood,” she said.

Tomek snapped his hand back.

“Please,” she said. “I need the blood of the living, too.” She looked at him. Tomek knew that if he gave her his blood, what happened next would be terrible.

“Why?” he asked.

She did not have her wolf eyes this night. There was something else there, from which he could no more turn away than he could make the moon go dark.

“I am going to make the soldiers go away,” she said.

Tomek held out his hand. She cut him with a penknife. The dull blade did not easily pierce his skin, and when she finished the wound was shallow.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked, as she held his canteen under his palm to catch the blood.

“Mix it with the blood of the dead,” she said. They stood together, unmoving, as blood dripped from Tomek’s hand.

“Are you going to kill the soldiers?” asked Tomek.

The woman smiled. “To a man.”

Tomek waited three days. He knew it was foolish to expect an explosion, but it was what he wanted: the soldiers’ barracks to go up in a gout of flame, noise louder than thunder, the earth to shake. He wanted the pens swallowed whole, so that everyone could go back to the way things were before.

There was not an explosion, but the earth moved. Tomek was sleeping, and did not know until it was too late. His father woke him with his sisters, yelling things at them that did not make sense. Tomek pulled on his coat.

Something was happening. He had helped to bring it about.

His family went out into the street, where their neighbors ran in different directions. Only when he was outside did Tomek realize that Konstancja, his singing bird of a sister, was not with them. For a moment he hoped she was with her beau, that he could protect her, but it seemed to him that no one could be safe against the woman from the oven.

“What’s going on?” he yelled to his father. His voice was lost in the voices of everyone else; there had never been such an unquiet night.

“What’s going on?” he yelled again. People were running towards the woods, towards the fields–everywhere but towards the barracks and the pens.

Tomek pulled away from his father, out of the hands of his clinging sisters, and ran the way that no one else was running. His father yelled something to him. Amidst the tumult Tomek recognized his voice and could not make out the words.

He did not make it as far as the soldiers’ barracks. The woman stopped him. She was naked again, but Tomek had no mind to spare for the sight of her body, full and firm where before it had been gaunt and grey. She had soldiers of her own behind her. They were naked too, not only of clothes. Many of them were missing layers of flesh, and even layers of muscle, so that in some places bone gleamed in the moonlight. Tomek stopped at the sight of them, but the woman kept walking forward. She touched her cold hand to his face.

“My army,” she said, sweeping a hand back at the silent troops behind her. Many of them were children and women. Scraps of clothing still hung from a few of their putrid bodies.

Tomek let out a breath of despair. “The mass graves,” he whispered.

The woman smiled. “They are empty.”

“And the soldiers?”

“They are dead.”

Tomek closed his eyes for a moment, then gathered his courage and looked her in the eye. “Then you are finished here.”

“We are not.”

She did not say it cruelly, nor with any hint of apology. It was only a fact to her.

Tomek was afraid.

The dead who were her army and entourage closed around her like a fist, and they touched Tomek with their hands of bone and muscle and the dregs of flesh. The woman pressed her thumb against his forehead, leaving a wet smear of the blood of the dead.

“You helped me,” she said. “When no one else did, you helped me. But you did not save anyone else.” She tilted her chin up. “All those screams from the pens, and did you even try?”

There were tears on Tomek’s face. “My family,” he said. “Please. My family.”

“My family,” the woman replied. “My everyone.” She gestured to her troops with one hand, and they shambled forward at her command, towards Tomek’s village.

“No!” he yelled. “Stop it! STOP IT!”

But the dead, if they could hear him, paid Tomek no mind. Those who had brushed against him took hold of his arms and body, and the rest moved on. Tomek fought them, sickened when their flesh slid off their bodies at his touch, when he snapped dry bones in his struggle to escape, but they were many and he was one.

“Please,” he called after the woman. “Please!”

She did not turn around.

The dead held him for hours, halfway between the burning barracks and his village. Their stench was overpowering, and Tomek took in great gulps of it as he fought them and panted for air.

In time, the village burned. The smoke was thick with smells that were like the ovens, and smells that were nothing like the ovens, and Tomek vomited down the front of his shirt.

He fought with the dead, and cursed them, and pleaded with them, but it did not matter.

Eventually, the sun rose, and beneath its rays the dead fell. They were only the dead again, no longer an army. The village was littered with them, and with the torn corpses of others. He saw Waclaw among them, or parts of Waclaw, and only one of his sisters. Many of the corpses were so ruined that Tomek could not make out their faces. He realized that if he went into the woods and out into the fields where his people had fled, there would be more. Only the pens were free from death. Tomek ventured into them the first time, and he wondered how anyone as emaciated as those people had found the energy to flee. The dead may have let them escape, but the people from the pens would never make it.

Until the sun was at its highest, Tomek searched for anyone alive, anything that moved. There was nothing: only bodies, only death, and already the smell of rot. He could not leave so many corpses bare against the sunlight. Already the air was full of flies.

Tomek looked at the pockets of ash between his fingers. Finally he went and lit the ovens.

“Halloween Street” was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1999 and was nominated for both a Stoker and an International Horror Guild award. “Tricks” “Butcher Paper” and “Masks of Me” were originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1999 as part of “Tricks & Treats: One Night on Halloween Street”. “Halloween Street” was reprinted in Steve’s collection Celestial Inventories.

This Flash on the Borderlands is a set of stories by Steve Rasnic Tem, all set on Halloween Street.

“Cuckoo” originally appeared in A Killer Among Demons, Craig Bezant (ed.) Dark Prints Press, May 2013. It was reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2014, Paula Guran (ed.), Prime Books.

Violence against children

Cuckoo

by Angela Slatter

The child was dead by the time I found her, but she suited my purposes perfectly.

Tiny delicate skin suit, meat sack, air thief.

The flesh was still warm, which is best—too hard to shrug on something in full rigor—and I crammed my bulk into the small body much as one might climb into a box or trunk to hide. A fold here, a dislocation there, a twinge of discomfort and curses when something tore, stretched just too far.

The rent was in the webbing of the right hand. Only a little rip, no matter. The sinister manus was my favoured choice of weapon anyway. I sat up, rolled my new shoulders—gently, carefully—then stood, rocking back slightly on legs too tender, too young to support my leviathan weight. I took a step, felt the world tilt, caught my balance before I fell and risked another tear; looked down at the single pink shoe, with its bows and glitter detail; took in the strange white cat face that ran around the hem of the pink and white dress; rubbed my miniature fingers against the dried brown stains that blotched the insides of my thighs.

The child had died hard.

The sliver of me that retained empathy ached, just a bit. But I could smell the scent of the one who’d done this and I would follow that scent. The hunt was on, my blood was up. Time was of the essence—my presence will speed decay. I pitched my head up so my nostrils caught the evening breeze and breathed deeply, filling my borrowed lungs, so the memory would remain.

“Hello, Handsome” was originally published in Giallo Fantistique in 2015. This was a great anthology edited by Ross E. Lockhart and released by Word Horde, and worth checking out if you’re a fan of Giallo, or if you want some nice surreal stories by folks like Orrin Grey and John Langan.

MUSIC USED – This week’s music is from “Orgy of the Vampires” by TERRORTRON: a posthumous electronic orb that splatters the ears of the living with a flood of brain-washing sound waves. This is a side project of Anders Manga which involves scoring cult horror movies you’ve never seen. Pray that you only get to hear them.

Our sisters and us we whisper beneath the glass. There are so many of them, in and out, stopping to look at the case, shaking their heads and walking. Some of them hear. Some of them bend an ear or take a closer look. Some of them we reject. We are perfect and thus, we are vain. A gangly thing with a pockmarked face wants to touch us, wants to bring us home, but we hiss and I know he hears us hiss. So he keeps walking. The girl behind the counter, she looks sad, robbed of her commission. Callous bitch.

Then we see him, then we smell him, the right one. We coo to him inaudibly soft but we know that he can hear it. His face is weathered some but not displeasing, unblemished, not browned by the sun but age and a great deal of smiling. He looks smart in his grey hat and his raincoat, so very smart. The sort of man who would shop at a store like this one, where the finest is sold to the finest. The finest, that’s the sort. We cannot help but notice his hands. It is in our nature to notice someone’s hands of course.

The hands are strong, the fingers slim and exquisite. His wrists are slender, the bones of his knuckles hard. These are not the beaten hands of a man his age. These are not the hands of a working man but nonetheless hands with purpose. I barely need to let him know I’m here or to talk over our sisters. He is deep but is wonderfully legible. Wonderfully, wonderfully legible. He approaches the salesgirl and points into the case.

“I’d like to see that pair.”

Oh, yes, oh yes, you would. You would like to get to know us and let us know you. You would like to take us home. There are stories we read in the people that come and go about the things that happen when we’re taken home, the exquisite warm sensations, the adventure and delight. Some of his secrets are legible but there is so much more to know.

Shed Skin is a PseudoPod Original. This story is the culmination of Getty’s attempts to adequately explore the experience of depression.

The Corpse Child is a PseudoPod Original

Kiss, Don’t Tell

by Cassandra Khaw

You never told me she’d be so human, so sweet. Marzipan bones and caramel hair, latte skin stretched taut over a face still new to wanting. Just a mouthful, really, a morsel, her eyes brittle as she watches us flit by, heartbeats sliding between the ribs of time.

In Europe, no one believes in kismet, but who needs faith to author fact?

Later, you joke about serendipity. I nod in silence, my fingers still glazed with her cells and her atoms, the taste of her bitter with ghosts of Sunday afternoon pasts. How many street corners have you kissed on? How many does she remember? How many times has she sat coiled by her phone, waiting, waiting, thumbing through pictures of you together, a patchwork of possibilities that should have spelled out a future?

I don’t sleep that night. Instead, I sit and watch the Parisian skyline, dreaming of penanggalans in waltz.

Pontianak, huli jing, rakshaka. You called me from a country of monsters, serpent-haired, dagger-teethed, skin hot as kiamat. Nothing like her, nothing like the women that slither through London, Berlin, Paris; their bones Abrahamic, their minds agnostic, mouths full with the gospel of Apple. Was it the novelty that enticed you, or the reflection of teeth? Because I can smell it on you, your flesh, your smile; ocean salt, hydra blood, a thousand ancient wars in a thousand new molecules. We’re monsters, you and I.

But her?

I can tell she’s a good girl, always has been, always will be, even though her dreams cup a fading memory of black leather and black lashes, whiplash-promises on her skin. Not a monster, even though she’s sometimes pretends, armoring herself with lipgloss and suits cut sharp as suicide.

Delicious, darling.

Langsuir, jiangshi, ngu tinh. I pull myself onto the window sill, feel cartilage bulge and vertebrae give. The air burns cold. Egui, preta, desire, hunger. My blood is singing, so loud that it amazes that you can sleep. I wonder what you’d say if you woke and found me framed in the moonlight, flesh and bone turned protean, amoebic.

I wonder what you’d think if you saw my wings: knucklebones strung together like rosaries, membranous skin, tendons to tether. Nothing like your angels, darling. Nothing so sweet.

I wonder what you’d do if I told you I’d chased her scent across the city, her a ghost, me a knot of entrails and superstition, invisible to rational men. Because under her skin, I tasted the salt of your old desires, coiling with hers, an ouroboros of mouth and grasping hands and moans. And nothing, darling, displeases me more.

I wonder, I wonder.

Would you beg me to stop, darling? As I stole across the skyline of her sleeping body, over hip and thigh and sternum, to stop a breath from her mouth, would you shout out no?

I imagine not. Women break like surf on the hearts of men, foam and whispers, frothing to nothing. You remember us for as long as we are there, stretched like cats in your beds, our flesh warm, our arms patient. No more, no less. And when we are gone, you write us into an inventory of conquests. Another notch, another monster taken by the smoke in your smile, the teeth in your eyes.

Darling, can I tell you a secret?

It would be so easy. To sip chi from her lips, to empty her like a broken heart, to leave her skin and only skin, like gauze or yesterday’s drunken lovemaking. Until all that is left but the instinct to walk, to breathe, to hold on, hold on, hold on.

But should I?

All monsters must eat, whether they are men or myth, fabrications of fear or consequences of nurture. We find our prey where we may. You in the unguarded, I in the broken, the worn-down, the street-side prayer, the alleyway fighter. But if you still cared, still held her wellbeing suspended like a prize in your consciousness, I might consider mercy.

Maybe.

If you were awake, darling, if you were standing framed in the moonlight, your lips stitched shut with veins, your eyes closed with red string, I would come to your ears and whisper, “What do you think will happen next?”

Will I write my hurts into doa selamats, a hundred invocations against a thousand new anguishes? Will I graze my tongue across hers, calling the monsters in her blood. Douen, Jumbie, Loogaroo. Will I tell them to keep her safe, keep her safe from men who only have eyes for themselves, who keep their hearts locked behind doors while they hold out their hands for yours?

Or will I dig through spine and brain, guzze blood and lymph? Will I gorge myself on lung fibrous and vein intricate, on intestines still warm with animal heat, on a brain still shuddering with a memory of you? Darling, do you see me keeping the best parts of her for myself, those things that made you love her for more years than you’ve known I? Or do you see it pulped into energy, into fuel for flight, inconsequential as the names of all the women you never loved, only lusted for?

One wonders, but it does not matter. When you wake up tomorrow, you won’t find me slathered in gore, throat bulging, belly heavy with meat and muscle. Instead, you will see me as you’ve always seen me, a fascination, a novelty, a hope.

When we kiss, when we trade affection like tokens of power, it’s possible that she will just be awaking, lungs inflamed with myth, and confused, move to sit at her parents’ balustrade, wondering why she had ever wasted time on you at all. Tomorrow, it’s possible too that her parents might awake and find her ribs in her bed, cracked open for marrow, licked completely clean, her finger-bones rattling like dice in her ribs. Tomorrow, they might scream and all of Paris will wake, wondering, wondering how this disaster came to be.

Who knows? You’ll never ask, and I’ll never tell.

Shed Skin

by Getty Hesse

It has been six days since the fourteen of us sloughed off our skin. We have abandoned distinctions between adult and adolescent, between caretaker and patient. Our corded muscles glimmer under the fluorescent lights. Blood vessels snake our bodies. Bones peek out. We should feel pain, the sting of the air against our flesh, but we don’t. Without the isolation of our skin we should be vulnerable to infection, and yet we are not. We do not hunger; we do not thirst.

We finger under each others’ muscles and blood vessels. We tongue them. We enter each other in every possible way until I cannot tell my appendages from any of the others’, until the others cannot tell their own appendages from mine. The boundaries of our bodies seem to shrivel away.

Before, those of us who were adolescents couldn’t leave until we were deemed not a threat to ourselves or others. But this little world had still been permeable. Parents would visit and call. The staff would leave after their shifts or come in to take over. New patients would be admitted. Old patients were discharged. Carts carrying trays of food would be brought in three times a day and taken out again with the remains.

Now, the one door out is locked, even to those who were once adults. The keys don’t work. No one comes in; we hear nothing from the other side of the door. The faucets no longer spout water. The phone does not even produce static. The windows, through which we once caught our only glimpses of the city outside, of ambulances and helicopters, are fogged to opacity. The gnashing of drills and jackhammers that spilled from one of the upper floors no longer jolts us awake in the morning, no longer deafens us. Not that we sleep anymore, or struggle hearing.

It is as if nothing exists outside our confines. Not that we mind. Our world, little though it is, is big enough for us.

We snap veins and arteries and muscles but they don’t hurt and they heal within moments. We did it by accident, at first, and then we did it for fun. We saw how much we could break without it being permanent.

On the third day we picked Latisha apart, carefully, unthreading her arteries and veins and capillaries from each other and from her tissue, separating the tendons of muscle and the bones, laying the organs out over the floor of the hall. I held her still-beating heart, the veins and arteries neatly snipped off by scissors from the front desk, and felt the life of it in my hand. Blood pooled across the floor, through open doors to what were once our bedrooms. The sticky warmth of it lapped against our feet.

As we watched, Latisha’s body stitched itself together, though the assorted parts seemed static. We would see her leg rebuilt, and have no recollection of how it occurred. We sifted through our memories and knew that time had passed and matter moved but could not make the two cohere, could not attribute one to the other.

When she was whole again she was laughing in ecstasy.

“What was it like?” Genevieve asked.

“It felt like being laid bare before God.”

I think I was a patient here, an adolescent, but I cannot remember anymore. I remember singing in the shower and on the toilet, learning to meditate, learning yoga, whispering to others about things that were not supposed to be spoken. I remember the ravening hollow, the ulcer through which my soul bled out like stomach acid, which is why I think I was one of the adolescents, but perhaps some of the adults had the same. Perhaps I was an adult who taught children how to deal with their hollows because I had learned how to deal with my own.

Of the other thirteen, I cannot remember who was a teen and who was an adult. It doesn’t matter, anyway. We are all the same now, separated only by names and space.

“Do you remember the hollow?” I ask.

“The hollow?” The nook where Genevieve’s nose once was glistens. We are lying upon one of the couches in the central room, her face nuzzled up against mine. I stick my tongue into the nook and lick the walls inside. She giggles.

As she licks inside the nook where my nose once was, I struggle to describe the hollow. “The feeling… that you can’t reach anyone else. That you can touch them, be inside them, speak to them, yet they’re too far away. That you’re all alone and always will be.”

“Oh,” Genevieve says. Her tongue recedes back into her mouth. She shivers.

“I remember that,” Jonathan says. He and José are making love, tangled over the arms of one of the chairs.

Everyone remembers, all fourteen of us.

When I first realized my hollow had vanished, my freshly shed skin was lying tattered on the floor before me. Air kissed my veins, arteries, muscles, flesh, as it might have before through a scrape or a cut. But I felt no pain. I felt only ecstasy, and something where once the nothing tormented me.

“Do you feel that?” I cried. I picked up my skin, tied it around my neck. I danced, laughing, and it billowed around me. “Do you feel that?”

Everyone stared, uncomprehending, at the skins fallen before them, their flesh glimmering with fresh freedom. Slowly, each of them smiled.

“Yes,” murmured Genevieve, and she tilted her head back and laughed in ecstasy. I kissed her brow, and kissed it and kissed it, and embraced her and felt her hot flesh against mine. She tied her skin about her neck and we danced, and the others followed suit. We whirled about each other in jubilant chaos and kissed each other on the forehead, lips, shoulder, chest; we touched each other in every way we could.

We lie about the floor and on the couch, panting, in a momentary lull. I’m leaning against the wall. Genevieve’s head is in my lap. I stroke the top of her head, where once there was scalp and hair. I think the hair was long and dark and curly, but my memory is vague and that hair might have belonged to someone else.

Genevieve extends her leg up to Latisha on the edge of the couch, and Latisha begins to suck Genevieve’s toes, tonguing the strips of muscle. I watch as José tickles Jonathan’s flaccid penis with his tongue.

I look down at the beautiful strips of muscle that extend from Genevieve’s skull to grip her jaw. “Why do you think this happened to us?” I ask.

She gazes up at me. She strokes my face. “God,” she says. “Or as good as. Only a perfect being could create such a perfect existence.”

Sometimes, I wonder what exists now outside the confines of our little world. Is our newfound heaven a miniature of a much larger miracle? Has the larger universe ceased to exist, replaced only by a nothing impossible to imagine? Or has the world continued on as it always has, with the ravening hollows at the core of every skin-constrained soul?

I wonder if the people outside are trying to get into our ward, or if they see it’s closed off but don’t try to enter for some reason beyond their grasp, or if they can’t see it, or if it’s gone. It’s possible they’re watching everything we’re doing, through windows we can’t see, that we’re some sort of science experiment or quarantine. I wonder, would others see us and know we’re blessed, or would they think us cursed?

I can’t remember names anymore, or genders. Almost without realizing it, I have stopped thinking of anyone as anything but a “they.” The concepts themselves, names and genders, corrode.

We don’t remember where one of us once ended and the others began. Our veins and arteries all bleed into each other, bones fuse, the borders of our minds dissolve until our thoughts do not come from one of us or another but from us all. Our many eyes take in the fractured all-sided view of our perfect, red, glistening bulb of a body, the many protruding limbs corded in veins and muscles.

We throw ourselves against the door, we tear at it, we smash our elbows and arms and heads against the black windows, bones breaking, skulls caving in, only to reassemble. If the people outside are still constricted in their skins, separated no matter how they try to fuse together, we want to save them, bring them into our amoebic, painless mass. If the people have formed their own amorphous multi-self, then we want to join them. Either way, it would be so beautiful, to have every human in the world together at last, to be many in one, for pain and loneliness to vanish.

The people outside could be gone, of course, in which case we could be at peace in our current body. We would mourn them, the humans who never experienced a life without pain, who were disconnected from all other beings from the snipping of their umbilical cords to the cessation of their senses. But the mourning would not last long, and would be followed by an eternity of joy.

We beat against the door and the windows, to no avail. We start beating against the walls, trying to find someplace, anyplace weak enough to cave in. Finally we collapse on the floor. Our bulbous body alters to accommodate it.

We cry for the possibility of people still tortured by hollows, still chained within the confines of the self. Our tears slip down twenty-eight cheeks of red muscle and veins. Some of the tears fall into open air, onto the tile floor. Others fall within our body, nestle upon hearts and lungs, trickle down the outer curves of arteries.

We stop crying after a while and get up, our body changing shape once again. We cannot at this moment save those outside, if they still need saving, if they still exist. But we can wait. We can love ourselves. We can hope that the door will eventually open, or a wall or window will become breakable once more.

We beat again against the walls, windows, door. But we do this without desperation. We smile with our fourteen mouths. We may break through, or we may not.

We are truly together, as one. That is what matters. We love ourselves. We will never be alone. We remember the ghost of pain but it no longer has any force. It is something we as good as never had.

The Corpse Child

By Chris Kuriata

Along the shores of Shipman’s Corner, a macabre belief quickly gained currency, which claimed most fatal childhood illnesses (scarlet fever, measles) could be cured by having the infected party sleep over the corpse of a young child.

The origin of this belief remains undiscovered. Condemned from the pulpit, the treatment was rarely applied. According to the tales, the corpse child must not have died from illness. Only a healthy body stopped by unnatural means (crushed in an avalanche of hay bales, say, or kicked in the head by an ornery horse) would do. Accident-made bodies became highly valued, meaning patients of “the corpse treatment” came exclusively from families of means.

“Momma, am I dreaming? Is that a scarecrow the servants are placing beneath my bed?”

“Lie back and go to sleep, my darling. In the morning, you will be made strong again.”

“Am I to share my room with a strange corpse?”

“Shhh… there is nothing to fear. He is where you cannot even see him.”

Two servants slid the corpse child into place before hurrying the young boy’s parents out of the room. Once the bedroom door was sealed, everyone removed the cloth masks covering their mouths. With heavy hearts, the young boy’s parents retired to their own chamber, praying for the blasphemous (and expensive) treatment to cleanse the threatening red boils sprouting across their beloved son’s tiny body.

The feverish boy awoke in the middle of the night, drawn back to consciousness by the stirrings beneath his mattress. Small fingers raked across the wooden support beams, echoing in the empty room like someone prematurely buried scratching the lid of their coffin.

“It is too cold down here,” a hollow voice whispered from under the bed. “Let us switch places.”

“I do not think that is a good idea.”

“Just for an hour, so I may warm up.”

“If I lie under the bed, the draught will only make me sicker.”

“Please, you can’t imagine how wet and chilled I am.”

“Forgive my thoughtlessness. I will call for the servants and they will bring you blankets.”

The corpse child sighed, making the water in his lungs bubble. “You are very wise, boy. I was actually trying to trick you.”

“Trick me?”

“Oh, yes. If you had switched places with me, I wouldn’t have traded back. In the morning, when your parents unsealed the room, I would have leapt up with my arms spread wide, shouting, ‘Momma! Poppa! I’m cured!’ They would have hugged me, tears streaming down their cheeks. You would have tried to call out from under the bed, but your sick tongue would’ve swollen up like a black eel and left you unable to speak. You would only be able to bray like a donkey, ‘Eee orr, eee orr!’ Believing you to be me, the servants would ram hooks into your legs and drag you outside to the pyre and set you aflame. Did you know a person’s head is too dense to burn? The servants would use a big rock to smash your skull into smaller pieces. And all the while, I would sit at the breakfast table, listening to you go up in smoke.”

This admission horrified the boy. “That is terrible. Shame on you for trying to trick me.”

“You can’t blame me for wanting to avoid such an awful fate myself. I may be dead but I do not wish to burn.”

The boy understood. He felt sympathy for the corpse child, who, after all, was going to make him well again. “Listen to me, when morning comes, I will insist Mother and Father not burn you.”

“That is very kind, but I shouldn’t want you to worry about my disposal.”

“I insist. Tell me what you would prefer.”

The corpse child thought hard. “Well, I have always been fond of the funny paintings in the museum; the look of agony on the faces of the condemned, the peasants tumbling beneath the swords of the King’s guard. When I was alive, it used to make me laugh to see the strokes of crimson paint gushing from swaddled babes in their mother’s arms. I think I should like to be buried on the grounds of the museum. They have a glorious courtyard where I will be able to hear the visitors laughing at the funny paintings. Such a reminder of joy will make my dark, lonely grave bearable.”

“It is settled. I promise, I will insist my parents not burn you but instead bury you at the museum.”

Moved by such a generous offer, the corpse child shook beneath the bed, making the caster wheels squeak. When he spoke next, he sounded as though he were holding back tears (though his speech impediment could also have been caused by lazy muscles in his dead throat). “You are very kind. So kind, I cannot hold my tongue. Though it would benefit me to keep quiet, I must warn you that you are in danger.”

“Danger? How?”

“Being wise people, your parents fully expect me to try and trick you into switching places. Come morning, they will assume the boy in the bed is not their son, but the skullduggerous corpse child attempting to take his place. Mark my words, whichever boy is lying on top of the bed will be seized by hooks and dragged outside and thrown in the fire and have his skull crushed so it will burn.”

“My parents will make no such mistake. Surely they will recognize me.”

“In the dim morning light? Why, the disciples could not recognize the resurrected Son that early in the morning. How will your parents recognize you?”

“I can easily prove who I am. I know the name of my young brother Jonathan, and our baby sister Rebecca. I know Mother is terrified of boat crossings. I know Father relies on me to wind his watch.”

“All trifle information I could have wheedled out of you while pretending to be your friend. You must believe me; under the bed is the only safe place. Come morning, your parents will destroy you.”

“I cannot believe my parents will be so blinded by suspicion they cannot tell the difference between their beloved son and a rotting corpse child. Your wretched stink alone makes evident who is who.”

“Please, you must let me help you.”

“No. I will stay on top of the bed and you will stay below. And you will be quiet, or else I will not tell my parents to bury you in the museum courtyard and you will be seized by hooks and thrown on the fire and have your skull crushed.”

Silence. Satisfied to have settled the matter, the boy turned over and sank his feverish cheek into the cool pillow, longing for the sweet relief of sleep to spread through his aching body.

He didn’t rest for long. Cold breath soon lashed the soles of his bare feet. The boy sat up, and through the murky blackness watched the corpse child pull himself over the foot of the bed, clinging to the sheets like a sailor hauling himself from the ocean. The corpse child’s fat, water logged lips pulled back in a snarl.

“This foolish conversation has gone on long enough. Get under the bed where it is safe, or else I will crawl under the covers and make you smell of rot and death. In the morning, your parents will be unable to tell the difference between the two of us and we will both be doomed.”

“I will not say another word to you. Goodnight.”

Growling like a trapped fox, the corpse child slipped deftly beneath the sheets and tunneled towards the boy. His cold, clammy hands seized the boy’s knees, and slowly dragged his dead weight over the boy’s body. Struggling to get away, the boy threw over the covers, only to find the corpse child’s twisted face resting on his chest. Their eyes locked.

The boy remained calm. His father once instructed him the most vulnerable part of a wild animal was their nose, so if he ever found himself face to face with a snarling beast, his best chance for survival was to aim for the snout. The boy raised his weakened hand and made a fist, but before he could strike, the corpse child grabbed him by the ears and forced their mouths together. Hot and cold noses mashed against one another as the corpse child breathed putrid gas from his abdomen down the boy’s throat. The boy gagged and retched. The two began to wrestle, each trying to toss the other over the side of the bed into the black ocean of the cold floor. The squeaking of the caster wheels echoed through the house.

First thing next morning, with the light still dim, the boy’s parents unsealed the room. They held their breath, fearing the worst—that the legends of the healing properties of child corpses were greatly exaggerated and their son’s bedroom would no longer be occupied by one corpse, but two.

The bed covers stirred, thrashing about like foam on an angry sea. The boy sprang forth, fully cured, his arms spread wide.

“Momma! Poppa!”

The relieved parents rushed to his bedside, wrapping their arms around him, ignoring the foul smell tainting his bed clothes.

“Our darling. Thank heavens you are well again.”

“Oh Mother, the corpse boy under the bed spoke to me in the night! He tried to trick me into switching places with him!”

“Yes, dear. We thought he might.”

“He told me you wouldn’t be able to tell him apart from your true son.”

“Oh dear heart, that was all wicked chicanery. Of course we know you’re our true son.”

The boy’s father signaled the two servants waiting in the doorway, each holding a sharp, metal hook which they thrust under the bed, piercing the legs of the corpse boy and dragging him out. The corpse boy made horrible noises, braying like a donkey, “Eee orr, eee orr!” The crackle of a roaring fire came through the open window, hungry for more fuel.

“Wait!” the boy said. “This wicked corpse boy may have tried to trick me, but I made a promise. Even though he is a lesser being without honour, I intend to keep my vow.”

“I am pleased, son. A righteous man always honours his vows, even those made to dishonest beings who mean to betray him.”

“I promised the corpse boy I would implore you not to throw him on the fire, but instead grant him his burial wish.”

“And so we shall. Tell us what he desires.”

“He confessed to me feeling envious of our loving household; such a cautious Mother who protects her children from unnecessary sea crossings, and a wise Father who teaches the value of responsibility by entrusting me to wind his watch each day, and the delight of my younger brother Jonathan and my baby sister Rebecca.”

The boy’s parents couldn’t help but preen from the flattering words the corpse child had spoken of them in the night. “Yes, son, you have been blessed with a loving household. One can hardly fault the corpse boy for scheming to join us.”

“Indeed. As such, he told me he wishes to be buried feet down and head up on the hill overlooking our home, close enough where he can hear our evening laughter. It would please him greatly to be buried where he can keep watch over us, and perhaps, once a year, we will trek up the hill to visit his grave and give thanks to him for making this new day possible. Yes, I think he would like that very much. Such a reminder of joy will make his dark, lonely grave bearable.”

Once again, great happiness filled the family home. While the servants stuffed the corpse boy into a sack for transport to his final resting place, the cured boy dressed and wandered the manor house. Along the way, he emptied the last of the lake water from his lungs into a large potted plant, giggling when the putrid water wilted the healthy palm fronds. Soon, the smell of fresh breakfast filled the air, guiding him to the dining room, where brother and sister flanked his new seat at his new table.

Check out PAPERBACKS FROM HELL by Grady Hendrix. Listen to the interview on the Know Fear Podcast with Grady and Will Erikson about the book and the paperback boom of the 70’s and 80’s.

A Howling Dog

by Nick Mamatas

The app, and associated website, had another name, but it was most appropriate to think of it as Cranki.ly. It was for neighbors to anonymously discuss neighborly things, but social media was as prone to Gresham’s Law as anything else—the bad conversations drove out the good ones. It only took three months or so from initial launch for the posts to be all about suspicious dark-skinned men skulking around town “supposedly delivering the so-called mail”, the essential wrongness of mowing the lawn in one’s boxer shorts, and conspiracy theorizing about the next major ISIS attack hitting town… “because the Super Wal-Mart, one of the really nice ones, is just five miles down on Route 5. It’s a juicy target for Jihadis.”

A juicy target, indeed.

The post that started all the real problems in Cranki.ly’s Alameda County Zone 4 was this one, posted one afternoon just a week ago:

Hey Neighbors,

I’ve been hearing a dog howl/cry at all hours from my apartment close to the corner of Russell and Schiffer. I was wondering if anyone knew who the dog belonged too… It breaks my heart and I’m wondering if the owner knows about it. One of the dogs I fostered a few years back had severe separation anxiety and would howl for most of the time when I left for work and I didn’t know about it until a neighbor alerted me, at which point, I was able to work on the separation anxiety with her.

Any leads appreciated. Thanks!

On the surface, a perfectly ordinary post. An especially pleasant one for Cranki.ly, actually despite the specter of an ever-howling dog. The post garnered no comments though, for the reason you have surely already guessed—nobody else had heard the dog. Certainly not at all hours. The best thing to do in such a case is just not respond at all. There are plenty of other threads to read.

Why explain, why ask, why encourage further discussion?

Three days later, the poster issued a follow-up.

Russell and Schiffer Residents,

Hello again! I am still hearing a dog howl and whine, day and night, every day, and every night. It is definitely coming from 2774 Schiffer. Please, take care of your dog! If you live in 2774 Schiffer, you have a responsibility to call your landlord or management company, or talk to your neighbor about how he or she (but let’s be honest, probably a he!) cares for a companion animal. I am beginning to wonder if the issue is actual abuse rather than just neglect and separation anxiety.

I do not want to have to call the city, as too often neglected animals are brought to shelter where they are quickly euthanized.

And then the howling will never stop!

A much more off-putting message. Why would anyone respond to that? There was no dog at all. The poster was obviously dealing with some sort of mental issue, or was trolling. Either way, nobody living in 2774 Schiffer—a squat six-unit apartment building of one-bedroom apartments—would have any call to extend the thread. And yet, someone did.

Actually, by definition the howling would stop then, no?

The strict discipline shown by the Cranki.ly regulars fractured then. Tasteless. was upvoted two dozen times. While Really funny, buddy. A total howler. was buried under a mountain of downvotes. One individual even tried to talk sense to the OP.

I live on the corner of Russell and Schiffer, catty-corner from 2774. Full-time freelancer, work from home. I don’t wear earbuds or even watch TV, and I like to keep my windows open when I can because I love the fragrance of lilacs. (I have several large bushes in my yard.) Never heard a dog howl even once, much less “at all hours.”

Several other people acknowledged the truth—nobody had ever heard a dog anywhere in the vicinity, much less howling emanating from 2774 Schiffer, which was a residence with a draconian policy when it came to regulations and pet deposits for even mere cats—dogs were absolutely forbidden. The howling isn’t just non-existent, one poster commented, it’s impossible.

Which, was, of course, false. It’s not impossible for there to have been a dog in a building in which dogs are banned. And just because only one person could hear its howling doesn’t mean that the howling was a delusion. There could have been a conspiracy of silence around the dog, around its constant cries for attention and relief. Indeed, all the comments responding to the original post could have been from one busy person, creating a narrative of tasteless rejoinders and cynicism from whole cloth just to further demoralize and upset the original poster.

For that matter, the initial post regarding the curious incident of a bark without a dog could have been an attempt at Internet virality. Creepypasta, as the kids say. Cranki.ly’s moderation policies leave something to be desired—anyone with an email address can post what they please so long as they eschew certain slurs. The only reason there’s little spam or true hatemongering on the site is that its user base of middle-class busybodies and PTA lifetime-members is of little interest to the broader online world. But what’s next? A report of a dog corpse surfacing in the soft dirt in the yard in front of the building after a week of heavy rains, or worse, bones found in the walls after 2774 Schiffer condo conversion? (Condo conversions being one of the perennial flamebait topics on Cranki.ly.) Or is it no dog at all, but instead some woman or child, gone feral and chained to a pipe near a rusty bucket of excrement, that had been howling all these days?

That “full-time freelance writer” was especially suspicious. Someone with an inclination toward fiction, and likely the impulse to procrastinate by goofing around on the Internet all day. Was all of Cranki.ly going to be written up in some obnoxious essay about group psychology, or urban legends? There was only one thing to do. Specifically, it was time to type

I hear it too.

And then press publish.

Another ten hours of silence on the thread, as if the neighborhood was holding its collective breath. And then a new party, or a new claim anyway, entered the thread.

I’m new to this website, but I heard from a friend about it and came to check what people in the Windham neighborhood are discussing. I thought this conversation was pretty interesting. I used to live in the building, years ago, and there was often a dog tied up outside at all times, in all weather. It’s mostly warm and sunny here in Northern California, but you know what I mean.

She wouldn’t actually howl or bark all the much, but I felt very sad whenever I saw the dog. One time I stood in the yard and I started howling, like that dog should have. I guess I was just trying to get some attention for the poor animal. Not one person even opened their blinds to look out the window and see what the ruckus was. It was a Sunday morning too, so people were home. I could see movement through the blinds in the windows. I really howled my head off!

Anyway, this was all more than twenty years ago, so that dog is probably long dead, but I just wanted to share the story as a way of reminding you all to be good to one another. Have a blessed day!

And then it was a war of all against all. Accusations flew—sockpuppets, tricks, spam, Russian hackers, hoaxing and punking, and repeated uploads of that now-ancient New Yorker cartoon panel featuring the adage “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

But I really do hear it too. Someone kept trying. Doesn’t anyone else hear it? I’m not the OP.

The poster went on:

This is insane. You’re all online all day long, and live within a mile of the place. Just walk outside. I live across the street; I can hear it now. Meet me on the corner of Russell and Schiffer. I’ll be wearing a blue hat. I have a long beard and glasses. I’ll be the one with the iPhone in hand, listening to and recording the howling of the dog. I’m not the OP, this is not a joke! It’s noon now. I’ll step outside in ten minutes and stand on the corner until 12:30. You can walk a mile in less than twenty minutes if you’re reasonably healthy. Just come out and listen!

Perhaps some of the lurkers on the thread contemplated joining the man, but no active posters did. One response read

Let me guess—I walk all the way to Schiffer Street and you’re there with a gun to steal my iPhone.

A rejoinder:

Oh don’t be paranoid. It’s probably some dumb prank. They’ll have a dog ready to howl or even just a recording of one, and they’ll video the reactions of whoever is there for some sort of tedious “found footage” movie.

Then

I am the dog come visit meeeeeoooooooooh!

was the third response.

“Meeeeeoooooooooh!” reads to me much more like a cat than a dog, so clearly you are dumb enough to be a dog. Do us all a favor and stop howling all day, or start, so we know what’s what!

finished up the subthread.

Despite the claims explicit and implicit in the home page copy and related images, Cranki.ly was not successfully “bringing communities together.” Nor was there very much “openness” and “honesty” created by the anonymity of the service. Not even when one Jack Reinhard, a long-time neighborhood resident, was hit by a car while standing right on Schiffer Street—a vehicle had jumped the curb, and sped off—nobody emerged from their homes to render aid. Nobody called 911. Reinhard had to do it himself, with his own broken arm. His blue hat fluttered away and landed on a Y-shaped tree branch half a block away. Someone took a photo of that and posted it on Cranki.ly. Reinhard had no local visitors during his overnight hospital stay, and only contacted his sister, who lived hours away in Sacramento. It took a day and a night for the hat to fall from the branch, and that was thanks to a squirrel not part of our program.

Setting a grease fire in one of the first-floor apartments of 2774 Schiffer was no help either. Sure, Cranki.ly posters made comments—ooh, sirens!! was upvoted a dozen times—and in the morning the URL to the local newspaper’s story on the topic was also posted, but while the fire burned and emergency vehicles congregated, not one window opened, not one local Cranki.ly poster toddled outside to see what was going on. Certainly, nobody even recalled the thread about the ever-howling dog supposedly in residence so many had engaged with just five days prior.

A prod:

Did the firefighters find the dog?

The responses were not encouraging: that would have been a “grilled hot dog”, eh? said one poster, and another, perhaps attempting to lighten the mood, posted a photo of a dachshund puppy in a hot dog bun. Couldn’t hear the howling over the sirens, sorry (and also because I’m not off my medication and can’t hear imaginary dogs) read a third post.

Incorrigible, the lot of them, it seemed. Cranki.ly may have well benefitted from rules against anonymity, or at least from a mechanism that would compel posters to hold to a consistent identity, like most bulletin boards and Internet comments sections. The online world is full of trolls and griefers, but surely, people would be nice to their neighbors whom they already knew, or could potentially face in heated meatspace confrontations after mouthing off online, no?

Well, perhaps, after all, the answer is still, at least potentially, yes. Finally, someone put up a post worth reading, a simple message of compassion and kindness:

I think we may all be having a hard time lately. I know things have been rough for me. I’m not calling anyone out; I’m just saying how I’ve personally been feeling these past few days. I’m sorry if anything I’ve posted has annoyed or agitated anyone. I wish you all health and peace—I really mean it. I usually have a drink at Raleigh’s every night, same stool (right in front of the cash register) same time (7:30 pm). If anyone wants to come out and sidle up next to me, I’ll buy you a cocktail. All are welcome.

Eureka! Anonymity under pressure can lead to improvements in sociability and fellow-feeling among neighborhood residents. This calls for a refinement of our protocol. The next step is clear: to procure and torture a real dog, day and night. Or perhaps a child.

PseudoPod 561: Better to Curse the Darkness than Light a Candle is a PseudoPod original.

Check out PAPERBACKS FROM HELL by Grady Hendrix. Listen to the interview on the Know Fear Podcast with Grady and Will Erikson about the book and the paperback boom of the 70’s and 80’s.

Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds!

Better to Curse the Darkness than Light a Candle

by Joseph Cusumano

They mockingly call me “Diogenes,” believing my lantern is carried merely to illuminate my path each night through the dark streets of Philadelphia. Yet it is not an honest man for whom I search, but a scoundrel, a liar, an adulterer, a thief, a murderer – ideally someone who has been all of these – for I must find a soul darker than my own.

This quest resulted from an earlier and more innocent one, first undertaken while I was a young man blissfully wed to Patience, who brimmed with optimism over what heaven had apparently planned for us. Not content with the considerable success that I enjoyed as the proprietor of Silsbury Shipping Company, I sought more wealth, the respect of Philadelphia’s business and merchant class, and especially the adoration that Patience showered upon me with each step my growing business took. On the occasion of my boasting to her that I now employed upwards of fifty men who labored on my behalf, moving goods from our warehouses to multiple sites hundreds of miles west, she swelled with pride in my accomplishment and even her passions were aroused.

My success was achieved before the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. When the canal first opened, there was no appreciable loss of business, merely a slowing in our rate of growth. However, by 1829, the volume of goods shipped through the canal at lower cost than any land route could hope to provide had created a disastrous effect on my personal economy and, to a lesser extent, on all of Philadelphia as well. Even the powerful textile manufacturers were adversely affected. If my business had suffered only a loss of revenue, not all would be lost, but I had taken substantial loans from banks to further my seemingly unending profits, loans based upon the value of my business and personal property, including our home. As the city’s fortunes declined, other borrowers faced the same issues as I, and the banks to which I was indebted ignored my entreaties to renegotiate the terms of the loans that might well be my ruin.

A man raised in a devout Calvinist community should never have resorted to what I did next, but had I not been taught that a man’s eternal fate could be ascertained by the material success and wealth he amassed on earth? If I lost everything, would it not be proof that I had no place among the chosen? How would my community judge me? Worst of all, how would Patience judge me? Thus did I begin a life of deceit, a series of mounting lies to everyone, especially my beloved.

“Charles,” she asked one September morning as I was preparing to leave for work, “have not the city’s declining fortunes affected your business?”

“Hardly at all,” I responded. “By letting part of our work force go, I’ve saved enough in labor costs that we can weather a moderate decline indefinitely. There is no need to trouble yourself over this.”

“But what of the men and their families whom you no longer employ? What is to happen to them?”

“I have pledged to each and every one of them three-fourths of their salary until they find new employment. They were immensely grateful.”

“Charles! What a lovely thing to do! But I shouldn’t be surprised, for it’s the right thing to do, and you are a righteous man indeed.” She had completely accepted this fabrication, hugged me, and bestowed a passionate kiss upon me. A righteous man would be consumed with guilt by this, but I was already preparing my next lie.

“Patience, my darling, I won’t be home for supper tonight. I have an important business meeting to attend and will return very late. You could visit your mother tonight, if you wish.” She happily agreed to this suggestion.

We believe work to be virtuous, but where is virtue when one can find so little to do? Incoming orders to transport goods to points west had plunged. The warehouse, greatly enlarged and refurbished with borrowed money, was less than a third occupied with goods to be transported. Thus, I spent the day on the edge of despair, reading the increasingly insistent letters from the banks. These I answered with deceitful replies, claiming that new orders had risen over the previous month and that the debt I had incurred would be paid with only slight additional delay.

At the end of this disheartening day, I rode west to an inn at the outskirts of the city, being of no mind to feign merriment with the merchants and professional people who frequented the establishments in the business district. However, once I reached the inn, a glass of wine and a hearty stew of boar raised my spirits considerably and prepared me for what lay ahead. I then resumed a westward course, thankful for pleasant autumnal weather and a dry road free of ruts. The change in the color of the trees was as beautiful as any I could remember, providing welcome distraction from my growing unease regarding the two sisters I sought. I had known of these two since childhood and had been warned to shun them. Almost never did they venture into the city, and I had not seen them for years. All details now forgotten, I remembered them only as middle aged spinsters.

More quickly than I would have chosen, the cabin reputed to be the home of the two sisters became visible as I surmounted the crest of a hill and gazed down into a shallow valley. The cabin appeared in a rather poor state of repair and looked uninhabited but for the smoke drifting from its chimney. After dismounting and securing the reins of my horse to an odd piece of pagan statuary in front of the cabin, I approached the door and knocked hesitantly. There was no response of any kind, and a part of me began to hope that none was forthcoming. I knocked a second time with still no sign of any stirring within. When I turned to remount my horse, a woman’s voice broke the silence. “Whom do you seek?”

A glance back at the cabin door showed it still shut, but a dark-haired woman now stood at the left side of the cabin, some ten yards away. She appeared more vigorous than I expected, likely at the transition from her third decade to her fourth, a youthfulness still lingering. Then a second woman appeared at her side, appearing of similar age and visage although slightly smaller in stature. Neither showed any hint of apprehension at the arrival of a stranger. As they approached, it took some effort to stand my ground.

“Who are you, and how may we be of service?” the second woman asked.

“I am Charles Silsbury, a businessman in Philadelphia. I… my business that is, has fallen upon hard times,” I replied, reluctant to admit my misfortune even to these two strangers.

“Pray come inside and have tea,” the slightly taller sister responded. The inside of the cabin, a single room, was clean and orderly, and they bade me to be seated at a small round table near the hearth. In one corner of the room stood an old spinning wheel. In another, two cupboards with multiple shelves held uncountable bottles, jars and tins. There was only one bed, its length placed against the wall opposite the front door and adjacent to a partially opened window. Four tall posts of polished mahogany supported the bed, and the remainder of the wooden furniture appeared to be equally well-fashioned.

The tea they served was highly aromatic, extremely hot, and flavored with a variety of herbs which gradually settled into the bottom of my cup. Instead of arousing me, the tea had a calming effect, perhaps taking me off my guard. After several swallows, life itself seemed to slow, and my mind latched upon one thing at a time, no longer racing from one conjecture to another. I was also able to focus on individual sounds in the room, including the ticking of a single-handed clock atop the fireplace mantle. This mindfulness was most queer, yet pleasant, and with the two of them seated expectantly at the table, I began my story, now unable to withhold anything.

They had offered no introduction of themselves, and I chose not to ask, suspecting there would be no meaningful response. But in my own mind did I name them. The taller would be Smirk, for the sneer that wrestled constantly with her otherwise welcoming smile. The shorter, who smiled not at all, became Malice; her eerie stare unnerved me until the tea had completely taken hold. Both women listened intently and never once interrupted to ask a question, simply nodding with understanding as I explained my situation. In my confession, I acknowledged my godless ambitions and the unyielding pride that had engendered so many fabrications. The closest either of them came to making any rebuke occurred when Smirk said “You wish us to help you out of the pit you’ve dug,” but fortunately, neither sister inquired as to why I believed they could do so. Had they asked, I would have felt compelled to answer.

“Yes, I entreat you. I see no way to help myself.” After a moment’s silence, the two women glanced at each other, and Malice gave her sister the merest of nods. Smirk rose and approached one of the cupboards, whereupon she took hold of a short, wide, cylindrical candle. This she placed within an open-top glass container almost twice the height of the candle, then brought it to the table and reseated herself.

“This candle will enable you to harness a power which cannot be exhausted; its source is eternal,” Smirk said. The candle was brown, the brown of old blood, but I made no inquiry regarding its origin.

“While the soul resides within the body,” Malice continued, “even a body ravaged by disease, it is safe. And when the body dies and the soul has neared its heavenly destination, also is it safe, provided the individual led a virtuous life. Yet there is a time during which every soul is vulnerable to those who are bold enough to entrap and harness it for their own purposes; this occurs just as the soul emerges from its corpse. For only a moment, it is as helpless as a newborn baby emerging from its mother.”

“Take this candle and place it at the bedside of one who is at death’s door,” Smirk said as she pushed it toward me. “The dying individual must be of good moral character, and the candle must be lit just before the moment of death. Do not light the candle too soon, lest it melt completely and lose its flame. At the instant at which the soul departs its body, the candle will flare suddenly with a bright blue light. Thus will you know that you have succeeded.”

“Succeeded?” I asked.

“In capturing the soul and imprisoning it within the flame,” Malice answered. “Once trapped, the soul becomes unable to ascend toward its destination, and the energy it expends in vain is yours to harness until the candle is willfully snuffed and the soul set free.” A shudder took me, for in that moment, I fully believed they possessed the power to bring about such an abomination. But how was I ever to bring myself to interdict the baptized and consecrated soul of a fellow Christian and withhold from it the beatific vision? All this merely to escape a financial calamity of my own making?

Smirk saw this incertitude take hold and said, “Once the flame has captured the soul, no harm will come to it, and the candle will burn indefinitely without further consumption of its substance. When your affairs have been set to rights, snuff the candle to release the soul so it may continue its journey. Resist the temptation to keep the soul beyond a restoration to what you once had. Contain your greed and seek nothing more.” Still uncertain, yet unwilling to display any further lack of resolve, I accepted the candle and would later choose whether or not to employ it.

“What of my payment to you?” I asked.

“You are in no position to pay us now,” Malice answered. “We will name a price once you are restored.” With that, our meeting concluded, and I remounted my steed to return home.

Weeks passed with no interruption of the downward spiral of my fortunes, weeks during which I came to chastise myself for foolishly believing that the sisters could provide me with a solution. Yet, a debate continued to rage within me as to whether I would execute their plan if the opportunity presented itself, but time was running out. I had received a writ of lien and eviction concerning my warehouse and all its contents. My creditors intended to sell everything at a time of severely depressed market prices and would not obtain sufficient funds to satisfy their claims against me. They would subsequently investigate my personal holdings and assets to make themselves whole.

Heretofore, the thought of actually creating the precise opportunity to entrap a departing soul had not occurred to me, but spurred by the writ of eviction, I devised an ingenious plan to find an elderly and righteous citizen near his or her natural death. And my church would be the vehicle for executing this plan. Showered with praise from Patience, I volunteered to become one of those who visited the sick and dying. The church itself would supply me with the information and the pretext I needed to enter the homes of the most vulnerable, and if this plan failed and I was eventually forced to rely upon the charity of the church to mitigate the effects of my impending ruin, there would likely be a reservoir of good will upon which to draw. So occupied was I in lauding myself for this clever solution, I scarcely considered its predatory and heinous nature.

Within days, my sights were narrowed to an excellent prospect. The Widow Huxford, age sixty-seven, was in a pitiful state of physical ruin. Blind and ravaged by lockjaw and dropsy, she would welcome her imminent death as a merciful event. Her daughter, Anne Crofton, was exhausted from caring for her mother and a family of her own, and she accepted with alacrity and gratitude my offer as a fellow church member to spend two nights a week with her infirm parent.

My vigil began on a Sunday night at the Widow Huxford’s two story freshly painted home on Canal Street where I was warmly greeted by Anne. Many hurricane lamps illuminated the first floor of the home, and the absence of the unpleasant odor associated with the cheaper varieties of whale oil further attested to the widow’s affluence. Upstairs in her room, she lay in bed, propped upright with three pillows, her dropsy and shortness of breath having progressed. Both her eyes were a milky opaque, and gangrenous bedsores on her backside produced a truly wretched odor. Anne informed me that the bedsores had worsened rapidly when her mother’s failing respirations no longer permitted her to assume a recumbent position on her side, but she did not apologize for her mother’s condition and tended to her with great affection. My task seemed simple. I could hasten the widow’s suffocation merely by removing the pillows which kept her upright and thus be assured that her death would transpire while I was present with the candle afire.

Having determined to carry out my plan on returning three nights later, I arrived promptly at nine o’clock, assured Anne that I would not stray from her mother’s bedside, and bade her goodnight from the front door as she descended the stoop to return to her own dwelling. Inside, I climbed the sturdy but creaking staircase and entered the widow’s bedroom, finding her immobile with eyelids closed. Had she already died? Was I too late? I strode to her bedside and placed my palm against her forehead, finding her feverish and damp. After observing her intently for several additional moments, I detected the gentlest undulation of the nightgown that covered her chest, yet the movement lacked the regular cadence of normal respiration. I had witnessed this pattern previously at the death of my own mother, in which progressively deeper and more rapid respirations were followed by a brief period during which respiration ceased entirely. This was repeated every forty to sixty seconds, always leaving an observer wondering if the last breath had been taken.

I removed the unholy candle from my valise and placed it on the nightstand next to an oil lamp, then procured a long match to transfer the flame from the oil lamp to the candle. When the match flamed brightly, I withdrew it from the lamp and moved it to the opening of the glass in which the candle lay. But with the flaming match only an inch away from the candle wick, my arm froze in hesitation.

As my determination wavered, the widow entered an episode of apnea more prolonged than its predecessors. My own breathing also ceased as I wondered if she had taken her last breath before the brown candle was lit, yet she began again, and when I glanced back at the candle, it was aflame! This could only have occurred by means of a force beckoning from within the candle rather than by my own volition.

The candle burned with a shuddering glow, throwing prancing silhouettes about the room. I thought of extinguishing the oil lamp, but decided that it best not contain a full measure of oil on the morrow, and thus my vigil continued. Carriages passed in the street below, and I watched as a nearly full moon was first shrouded and then unveiled by the passage of clouds. And still she breathed. I checked the candle and found to my alarm that less than a third of its brown substance remained. Was this frail old woman defying me?

Thus far, I had done nothing that could be construed as harmful, but with the candle continuing to shrink seemingly quicker than before, I snatched her pillows away and left her completely supine. Now I had truly crossed a bridge and burnt it behind me. The minutes passed, and still she breathed.

She was defying me, somehow mindful of my impending ruin and waiting for the candle to extinguish itself before drawing her final breath. Another glance at the candle revealed mere moments remaining!

Panic ignited a fury within me, a fury at her willful defiance. Grasping a pillow with both hands, I slammed it over her slack face and dropped a knee upon her small bony chest to make respiration twice impossible. Another glimpse of the candle revealed that it still burned. Increasing the pressure of my knee against her chest suddenly caused her breastbone to snap, and a moment later, the candle flared as Smirk and Malice had promised. Her soul was trapped, and it was mine.

Despair! All is lost, all has been taken, even my beautiful Patience. Everyone thinks ill of her, certain that she callously chose to abandon me as we plummeted toward financial ruin. In truth, financial ruin was not the cause of her flight to her parents. I discovered this the moment I returned home on the morning after the Widow Huxford’s demise. Hearing me enter our home, Patience rushed from the kitchen to greet me, but the moment our eyes met, all joy left her and she halted several feet away. She stared at me as if I were a stranger. Or an intruder. All that she could utter was “Oh….”

“Patience, what is it? What is wrong?” I asked as I approached her with extended arms to embrace her. She took several steps back, covered her mouth with her hand, and regarded me in uneasy silence and confusion. Had the stain of murder descended upon me? A stain that was all too apparent to her? She turned her back on me and quickly ascended the staircase, whereupon I rushed to the large mirror in our foyer to search for what had repulsed her. Exhaustion from a lack of sleep, something which normally evoked her solicitous nature, was evident, but an unmistakable darkness had also crept into my countenance, and I liked it not. Not at all.

My entreaties to her were as futile as those directed to my creditors; she simply was no longer mine to cherish. I soon found myself possessing little more than my personal items, a small sum of money that I had disclosed to no one, and the mysterious candle that continued to burn day after day after day. Those who observed my protective and covetous manner regarding the candle thought me deranged, and I did little to discourage this attitude since it caused them to leave me in peace.

Left to my own devices and living alone in a cheaply furnished, poorly-lit room for rent, I examined the events of the preceding weeks, focusing primarily on my encounter with the two witches. How else to regard them? The candle was no less enchanted than a goose which lays golden eggs, but it had brought me nothing but ruin. Had it not flared brightly at the very moment of the widow Huxford’s death, as promised by Smirk and Malice? And do I not flinch when a twig snaps underfoot, scolding me with the echo of the widow’s breastbone as it cracked?

Presently, I came upon a frightful conjecture, that the candle was no talisman or channel of good fortune, but rather a cursed object or a weapon, and that I was nothing more than the sisters’ means of procurement. They had made an unmitigated fool of me! They knew full well the candle’s ruinous effect and that I must return to them seeking explanation and redress, the evil instrument in my possession.

How had I have become sufficiently gullible to believe that a scheme requiring the death of a God-fearing and righteous woman, a member of my own congregation, could bring me anything but despair? My murderous rage, at an imagined defiance on the widow’s part, had arisen from nothing more than her innocent grasping at the last tendrils of God-given life. What to do? What to do, indeed!

If the sisters’ plan was to obtain this wretched candle, I might yet thwart them. By extinguishing the candle, the widow’s soul could be freed, and this cursed object need never fall into their hands. Their possession and use of it would only bring misery to others. Thus might I redeem myself and vow to live righteously until the end of my days. But the appeal of this plan began to fade when I considered that I may have blundered in some way while capturing the widow’s soul. But how?

Whipsawed by this conundrum, I paced my small dark room in search of a resolute plan. If I extinguished the candle before seeking the sisters’ counsel, I would surely spend the rest of my life wondering if I had discarded an opportunity for great wealth, perhaps even regaining the love and admiration of my dear Patience. This propelled me to a decision. I would return to Smirk and Malice with the candle, but carry a weapon of my own.

With a borrowed steed, I retraced my previous journey westward, this time stopping around midday at the same small establishment where I had supped four weeks prior. Emerging from the inn after a satisfying meal, I was tempted by light rain and distant thunder to remain there, perhaps overnight, but ultimately chose to continue my journey to conserve what little money remained. Before long, I regretted this decision, a storm soaking and chilling me, its thunder pummeling my ears and terrifying my steed. The road became enveloped in mud, slowing my progress and causing my trek to seem interminable, yet I knew there was no risk that the ensorcelled candle would be extinguished.

Upon finally arriving at the sisters’ cabin, I thumped the front door impatiently with my entire forearm and demanded entrance. The door abruptly swung inward, and Malice beckoned me to enter. Smirk took my coat and hung it on a hook attached to the inside surface of the door. Had they expected me on so wretched a day?

“Please be—” Malice began, but halted as I extracted the candle and its glass enclosure from a leather sack and lay it upon their table. Both women took a step back from it, then stared at me.

“What have you done?” Smirk demanded.

“I have followed your every instruction and entrapped a soul, the soul of a righteous woman, a member of my own congregation, but disaster and despair have become my daily lot,” I answered in an accusatory tone. “Everything has been taken from me, and my wife has fled to her parents.”

Wordlessly, both sisters slowly approached the candle for a closer inspection, I believing they wished to determine precisely how little of the brown substance remained. But I was mistaken; this was not their intention.

“How do you perceive the flame?” Smirk asked, turning to me with eyes blazing.

“As you can plainly see, it is bright crimson,” I replied. “And it flared at the instant the emerging soul of an old woman was entrapped.”

In a slow threatening tone, Malice uttered “You … must take that candle away from here at once and never return. It poses a grievous threat. You killed her, didn’t you?”

“I had to! The candle was near to extinguishing, yet on she lingered.”

“Simple instructions were you given,” Malice continued, penetrating me with that eerie stare. “You were to be in attendance at the moment of death, not cause it. Worse, the soul entrapped in the flame is no more virtuous than your own. Its destiny is eternal punishment.”

“How is that possible? Everyone knew her to be a saintly and pious woman,” I pleaded.

“She most likely murdered her husband, no saint himself I’d wager,” Smirk answered. “T’is such a simple thing to poison a man’s porridge.”

“But what threat does the candle pose?” I continued in a voice that both demanded and pleaded.

“If the candle is willfully extinguished, the widow’s soul, inexorably pulled to the pit, will drag with it a soul like itself, one to delight the demons, one with which to bargain with them,” Smirk said. I was about to ask whose soul will it choose? when the answer lept upon me. I would be its victim, for I had murdered the Widow Huxford. These two witches were no paragons of virtue, but I gathered that neither had committed that most heinous of crimes. Yet they wanted me gone quickly and with the flame at my side.

“But what am I to do?” I pleaded unabashedly, my pride now smothered in desperation.

“You must search for another,” Malice answered. “One whose crimes are darker than your own. Only in his company may you smother the flame, for the widow’s soul would reward the demons with one more hideous than your own.”

With this admonition, I took my leave, never to see either of them again. I knew I must rid myself of this accursed candle. Only then might my fortunes be restored and the redemption of my soul sought.

Months have passed, and I have been unable to rebuild my life. The ill fortune of the red-flamed candle thwarts me at every turn. There is nothing for it but to live in penury and continue my quest for someone more deserving of damnation than I. Surely such an individual can be found among a population of eighty thousand, for is there anything more certain than the reprobate nature of man?

Charity from my congregation and an occasional stint of manual labor enable me to keep body and soul together, and each night I renew my search for a monster in the City of Brotherly Love. The crimson flame is now enclosed within a brass lantern. Its metal handle creaks in a regular cadence as it sways by my side. Some of the regulars on the streets and in the alleys continue to jeer me. “Diogenes, if you haven’t found an honest man by now, give up!” Others, more perceptive, remain silent and avoid me.

My inability to assess character, evidenced by my foolhardy selection of the Widow Huxford months ago, has meant that I must witness a crime so heartless that the widow will be compelled to drag someone other than myself into the pit. Only then will I extinguish the flame. I believe my quest to be right-minded, for surely it is no sin to ensnare the damned.

“Where the Summer Ends” first appeared in the seminal anthology Dark Forces (1980), edited by Kirby McCauley. This particular anthology was an eye-opener to 12 year old co-editor of Pseudopod Shawn Garrett, and deserves a place on the bookshelf of any fan of weird fiction.

Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds!

Granite Requires

By T.J. Berry

Granite requires my baby’s eyes. Only one of them really, but that’s still one more eye than she’s gonna give. That granite already took one of mine.

I may have only one eye, but I’m a worker, not a taker. I have three jobs. First and most importantly, I’m a mama to my baby girl. She will always be priority numero uno. Secondly, I do remote transcription for a vet in Albuquerque when their regular people get behind. And third, I have a side agreement with a few of the guys in this town that keeps me in tax-free cash. God bless America.

I’m never going to be like Mama Tracey, who sits out front of Dell’s General Store holding out her mug for cash. People give it to her too, paper money like fives and tens, cause she gave both of her eyes to the granite.

They took the first in fifty-two after she was born. The other she volunteered in eighty-eight when pickings were slim in town and the rocks started to collect their due.

I could give my second eye in place of my baby and collect fives and tens too, but I bet there’s not room in front of Dell’s for both me and Mama Tracey. She’s wide in the hips and also people will think I’m a copycat and give me less. Anyways, I have my Nightlee now and lord knows you need at least one eye to take care of a baby.

I’m walking up the steps to Dell’s, which is why I’m thinking on Mama Tracey. There’s a ramp, on account of all the townies missing eyes and toes, but I like to take the stairs. Just to show I can.

Mama Tracey puts down her mug when I come around. I wonder how she always knows it’s me coming up the steps. Maybe she can hear my flip-flops making a particular sound on the wood, like that blind superhero. Or maybe she can hear the old guys stop talking so they can at stare at my boobs.

The four old men who park themselves at Dell’s are siting on either side of the entrance. They’re not panhandlers officially, but they’re always begging for your time and attention when you just want to walk on by. I don’t have to wait long for them to quit loving on the second amendment and start loving on me.

“You want an ice cream, Miss CassieLyn?” asks one of the old guys.

I adjust Nightlee onto my other hip so I can give him a full-on look that says to take your ice cream and shove it. He knows very well that I’m lachrymose intolerant and I’ll be farting like a dog if I have ice cream.

He laughs and I’m annoyed because he’s teasing me. I could shut that garbage down by telling his shriveled friends that he likes a pinkie up his ass when I blow him on Tuesday nights, but I can’t do that because public relations is a big part of my job.

“I came to ask a question,” I say, stepping up onto the porch so that Nightlee’s fuzzy head doesn’t burn in the sun. “I want to know how to switch rocks.”

All three of them answer with outraged little puffing sounds through their thin lips.

“Your baby belongs to granite,” says my Tuesday night appointment, whose name is Jack. The old guy smell up here is making me want to gag–and I almost never gag. “It’s a damn shame. Her blue eyes remind me of the sea off the Amalfi coast. I was there in forty-six,” says Jack.

One of the other guys points to his foot.

“Born to marble in the lean years. Gave two toes before middle school. Navy wouldn’t take me, so I packed parachutes in El Paso.”

I move Nightlee back to my other side because damn if they aren’t revving up to recite their list of injuries, which starts with the parts they gave to the rocks as babies and ends with mole biopsies and gallbladder removals.

“That’s nothing, I had dentures before I was thirty for all the teeth they took for the breccia.” This guy clicks his false teeth up and down, showing the pink crescent of his gums and I have to bury my face in the sweet shampoo smell of Nightlee’s scalp to keep from throwing up.

Mama Tracey chimes in from her chair.

“I can’t see a thing on account of that damn granite taking both my eyes.”

They murmur their approval.

The third guy smacks his walking stick on the porch with a loud rap. He raises his eyebrows and then opens his mouth to show off a crooked stub of a tongue in his cavernous mouth. He waggles it around with a slapping sound.

“I guess Dickie wins,” says Jack.

“Dickie always wins.”

“Goddamn that limestone.”

Dickie rests his chin on the top of the walking stick with a smug smile and I guess if you’re going to have your tongue carved out before your first birthday, then at least you should be able to one-up your friends.

“Anyways,” I say, eager to get away from the self-congratulatory torture roundtable. “How do I get Nightlee another rock besides granite?”

“Well,” says Jack, “There’s an order to things, CassieLyn. You can’t just choose the rock you want. Everybody would pick shale and the other rocks would come after the rest of us.”

“I’m not asking for shale,” because that would be ridiculous. Shale requires hair and anybody with half a brain would be willing to go bald instead of blind. “But if granite can wait a few months, Kaidence is having her baby in December–”

Jack reaches behind his chair for the Calendar. I let Nightlee pull tiny fistfuls of my hair and shove them into her mouth, even though it hurts like a bitch, because it keeps her quiet and I need to focus on this negotiation.

The Calendar is one of those big jobbers that spans a decade, one year on every page. Jack’s marked the due date for each rock in tiny little block letters that they don’t teach us how to make at school any more.

“Well,” he says, tracing the months backwards to last year. “It’s been twenty-three months since granite had an eye.”

“Take one for the team so everyone wins,” says Mama Tracey and I suddenly feel all ganged up on. “We all gave our due.”

“And then some,” says Jack, waving toward Mama Tracey, who nods even though she can’t see him wave.

They’re all fuckers. Especially that Jack, who owes me at least a little leeway, considering the places my mouth has been on him. I tilt my head like I’m concerned.

“I gotta mention, Jackie, that I noticed a bump on your prostate when my finger was up there the other night. You should probably get it checked out. For the common good.”

Jack’s mouth flaps open and his friends whoop and holler, all except the mute one who bangs his stick on the wooden porch.

As I leave the porch my heel misses the last step. I sort of slip-slide and come down hard, kneeling on the packed dirt. It’s a depth perspective problem on account of my missing eye. But Nightlee didn’t fall because I’d never let go of her no matter what.

I lift my middle finger over my head and hold it where Nightlee can’t see, as I don’t curse in front of my baby. I’m going to have twenty minutes free on Tuesday nights from here on out, I guess.

Schist requires an ear, so Kaidence probably won’t swap for an eye, but I’ll kick myself if I don’t ask. A missing ear is easy to work with, just grow your girl’s hair long to cover it up. And since they only slice off the outside part, not the guts inside, schist people hear just as well as anybody else. You always find a way to work around the pieces they take off you.

Kaidence’s trailer is at the back of the Shipyard, which is just a trash dump with a fancy name. As I pick my way around old tires and broken bottles, Nightlee starts making little grunty noises. I realize I should’ve brought a bottle with me.

I knock on Kaidence’s door and her boyfriend Cody answers. Now I learned at the regional high school, where we all got bussed to an hour each way, that there are two kinds of Codys in this world. One is the type with white teeth who runs track and is a mathlete or some other activity that doesn’t require stitches. That type of Cody won’t give someone like me the time of day.

Then there’s this other type of Cody, who shoots himself in the leg showing off his new rifle and decorates one entire wall of his bedroom with empty Crown Royal bottles. That Cody will be all over you, but he’s an anchor who’ll drag you down. I don’t know if there are other types of Codys in the world, but I haven’t met one yet.

Cody Tigh was the second kind of Cody.

“Is Kaidence here?” I ask, standing sideways on the stairs so that Nightlee is on the far side of me, because you never know what the second kind of Cody is liable to do. And also, Cody Tigh has a particular interest in my Nightlee.

“Maybe.” He draws the word out real long to make sure I know he’s gonna make me work for it, but I’m not playing today. I back down two stairs, making it look like I’m leaving.

“Okay. I’ll come back.”

“She’s here. I’ll let you in if I can hold the baby,” he says, smiling at me with blue-stained teeth.

Now I have a carborundum on my hands, because on one side I do not want to give my baby girl to Cody Tigh who is a liar and a cheater. And on the other side, he’s kind of Nightlee’s father so I think I am required by law to let him and her have a visitation.

After a minute, I hold Nightlee out under her armpits. Cody glances over at the window of the trailer, but the tv is up loud and Kaidence isn’t going to look up from her shows.

He takes Nightlee from me and squashes her against his chest like he’s holding a biology textbook. She meeps and squirms.

“Not so tight. Just hold her bottom half. She can sit up by herself.”

He touches Nightlee’s cheek.

“She’s pretty soft.”

“Yep.”

“And wet.”

“As always.”

A muffled voice comes from inside the trailer.

“Code, did you get my smokes?”

Cody shoves Nightlee back at me so fast that her head knocks me in the mouth and she squeals.

“Dammit Cody, be careful.”

I ruffle her fuzz and find two little imprints from my front teeth. Not bleeding, but swelling up all red.

Cody is in the house like a shot and I follow him. He rummages through a plastic grocery bag on the kitchen table and tosses a fresh pack of cigarettes to Kaidence on the couch. She looks over her shoulder and her eyes go like slits.

“CassieLyn, you have no business being in my house.”

“I came to ask you something.”

She ignores me and whacks the package on her palm for a good long time. The trailer smells like mildew and everything’s buttery yellow from the sheen of old smoke. I was here years ago, when Kaidence’s mom and dad were alive and the place was kept up. Her dad died when the gneiss was left for too long without a nose. People say that three-ton hunk of stone dropped right out of the sky onto his Cavalier.

Kaidence lights up. Smoke drifts past beams of sunlight shining through a dozen tiny holes in the living room wall. Someone’s been trigger-happy with a shotgun. I’d place my bets on Cody.

I sit on the corner of the couch, putting my knuckle in Nightlee’s mouth to keep her quiet. Kaidence leans back and rests a hand on her belly to remind me that she also has a baby from Cody Tigh.

“I talked to the Calendar boys and they said we can trade rocks, schist for granite, as long as you’re willing,” I say, trying to make it sound more official by bringing up the Calendar.

Kaidence makes a sound like the air coming out of a balloon and takes a long drag. I can see her eyes say no before her mouth says anything.

“You are stupider than they say, CassieLyn. No one would trade an ear for an eye.”

“I can pay.”

“How much?”

I have a dozen twenties saved up. Plan A is swapping rocks with Kaidence. Plan B is a bus ticket to Albuquerque.

“Two hundred.”

Kaidence puts her head back against the couch.

“Jee-zus, that’s an insult. I’m not raising up a half-blind kid for two hundred dollars. No offense.”

A roach skitters across her thigh. Her pale skin twitches, but she doesn’t swat it away. I stand up, hoping none of the bugs are on my clothes. Things that crawl on you in trailers are sometimes hard to get rid of.

I turn to see Cody Tigh behind me, holding his hunting knife.

“If you aren’t giving the baby’s eye to the granite, you have find a replacement,” he says, picking at his thumbnail with the blade, “You giving your other one?”

My stomach clenches. I fight the urge to step back. You never show a Cody you’re afraid or they’ll tail you like a coyote until you’re exhausted and weak and they take anything they want.

“Definitely,” I say, leaning so close that I can smell blue raspberry Jolly Rancher on his breath. His eyes widen. “I’m gonna use the same knife they used to carve that big-ass hole in the middle of your face.”

He puts up his hand without thinking, checking that his prosthetic nose hasn’t come loose. It’s still on tight, but I see the split-second flash of fear in his eyes. And he knows that I see.

“Get out,” he says with a hitch in his voice and I feel triumphant and awful at the very same time.

On the walk home, Nightlee is full on crying so that every damn person in town stares at me and thinks about what a terrible mother I am. I stick my knuckle in her mouth again, but when she sucks and comes up dry, she screams even louder.

As I pass Dell’s, there’s a crash that sounds like train-on-train action from the lot behind the store. The old guys hit the deck and people come trotting out of every building on Main. Nightlee is startled into silence by the kind of booming vibration that you feel in your heart.

“What the hell was that?” asks Mama Tracey, picking herself up off the ground.

I’m guessing people are just pretending they don’t know, because we’ve all heard that noise before. It’s the sound of one of the rocks smashing into a house.

I come around Dell’s and take a minute to figure out where the trailer used to be, because I can only see the basalt, standing on its small end like a skyscraper.

It’s nestled in the new guy’s place. He was passing through last year and found our little town so very welcoming that he stayed the night. We’re good at making strangers feel at home. Spend one night here and the rules say you’re in the rock rotation, just like the rest of us.

When we told him about the requirements, he laughed and refused to give a finger to the basalt. I thought maybe some of the men would hold him down and take it from him, but they said it was fine to wait. Based on the Calendar, that rock had plenty of time on it.

They even offered him a trailer for free. I think he was glad to have a place where no one questioned who he was or how he ended up here. Which is not too great a criteria for picking new neighbors.

Every day those men on the porch at Dell’s would remind him to give the basalt his finger. Tick tock… the rocks only wait so long. But that guy, he dicked around playing his guitar, fishing the stream, and drinking PBR in his yard.

When it got close to a year, they warned him that the basalt was nothing to mess around with. The longest the basalt had ever waited was fifteen months, so time was a-wasting. This week, he’d just about made up his mind to give his right pinkie–which you don’t need for strumming–when the basalt decided it had waited long enough.

That’s one thing we do know about the rocks. They don’t always come for us in a particular order, but they do love them some newcomer blood.

Around the back of Dell’s, that monstrous rock has dropped straight through the top of the trailer, blowing the walls down flat like the petals of a daisy.

It sits in what used to be the kitchen. A pair of legs splays out from underneath–like the wicked witch but with cowboy boots. We tried to tell him.

“Idiot,” says the man next to me, holding a pair of bolt cutters with nine fingers. “Shoulda just gave it.”

Even on my bad side, I feel his stare on Nightlee. If granite doesn’t get its due soon, it’ll come for her or anyone with an eye left.

“You know they’re careful about it,” says the bolt cutter man in what he thinks is a soothing voice that makes my butt tingle. “They’ll put her to sleep and like a real operation. Doctor Inez takes good care that nobody gets an infection. They’ll make the socket look real nice. Even better than when you were a kid.”

He reaches out to touch Nightlee’s head and I yank her away. He spits his chew onto what used to be the bathroom wall, kneeling down to pull off the dead man’s boots. He positions his cutters and starts crunching off toes one-by-one. No one knows for sure if recently alive parts count for anything, but we’re not going to pass up the opportunity to try.

I see my dad near the edge of the crowd. Our eyes meet for a second and I hurry away from him, but he’s faster because he’s not carrying a twenty-two pound baby.

“You give that granite your girl’s eye, understand?” he says into my ear. I smell his cologne and it smells good and terrible. I stop walking even though I don’t mean to.

“Get out of here, Ed,” I say. “You don’t have claim over me no more.”

Nightlee reaches out and grasps a strand of his greasy hair, pulling him closer to her wet face.

I untangle strands of gray-black hair out from between Nightlee’s fingers. The loops pinch tight when I pull and she howls.

People press in on all sides of me.

“Ed, we can’t have this. There’s an order to things,” says Toeless.

“If she won’t give it willingly, we’ll have to take steps. The rocks are moving a lot these days and the granite isn’t going to wait.” Jack drapes his arm around me, but turns to face my father. “You don’t want it to be like Linda, Ed.”

The way he says my mother’s name, my throat gets all tight and tingly. I clear it a few times and try to cough the hurt out.

“CassieLyn,” says Jack, reaching up to brush his thumb across my eyebrow that frames a big, smooth hole. “Just a quick nap and it’ll be over. I promise she won’t feel anything. You don’t want to end up like your mama, do you?”

He pulls a funny face and Nightlee giggles. My outsides are frozen in place, but my insides are throbbing in time to my heart. I feel like I’m thirteen again, moving to this tiny desert town with my parents. Mom has a new job as a third-grade teacher and I’m hearing some made-up story from the other kids about rocks that fall from the sky and the body parts everyone gives to keep them from killing. I’m hearing my mother’s screams as people grab her outside of school one morning. They already have a substitute teacher lined up. I’m meeting my mother at our front door the next day. She looks down at me, groggy and mute. Her hands shake so hard as she packs up that half the clothes stick out the sides of her suitcase. I’m screaming myself hoarse as my blank-faced father hands me over to the people who gather in our yard. I’m thrashing against the callused hands of four grown men pressing my arms and legs onto a metal table before the IV makes everything go white. I’m waking up under a patchwork of bandages and gauze, turning my head when my father whispers that I did a good job and I’m safe from the granite now.

If I don’t agree, they’ll pluck Nightlee right out of her playpen in the middle of the night.

“Okay,” I say quietly. “But I get to bring her in.” I stop talking and press my lips together so no one sees them shake.

Jack smiles.

“Good girl. We’ll do it tomorrow, as soon as the doctor gets in.”

I nod, because that’s all I can get to come out of me.

My father puts his hand on Nightlee’s head and I have to fight myself hard to let him keep it there.

“It’ll be all right, CassieLyn. You’ll see.”

His eyes are wet, but mine are dry. That’s how you can tell I’m the stronger person. He gave in to them when I was thirteen, but I won’t ever give in for my Nightlee.

The crowd breaks up and shuffles toward home for dinner and television shows and turning down sex for the tenth night in a row. But I stand behind Dell’s for a minute, listening to a nearby dog echo Nightlee’s hungry howl. Something moves behind me and again there’s Cody Tigh, leaning against a stop sign watching us, still picking his nails with that hunting knife. That boy must have the cleanest nails in Cibola County.

“You want my help, CassieLyn?” he asks. I can barely hear him over Nightlee. I turn toward home and walk as fast as I can.

“I do not.”

Cody’s footsteps fall in line behind mine.

“I know you’re going to run away. Probably got a bus ticket to Albuquerque. But I’m telling you it doesn’t work that way.”

Cody Tigh was born here and they took his nose when he was too little to make a fuss. He likes to lord his knowledge of the rocks over me and all the other newcomers.

“They’ll find you and drag you back unless the granite gets an eye,” he says, sheathing the knife.

People are looking out of their windows, watching us pass, on account of Nightlee and Cody’s big mouths. Like father, like daughter.

“Shut up,” I say, turning and walking backwards. “Everyone can hear.”

“I’m saying you need a replacement eye. So the baby doesn’t have to give up hers.” He grabs my free arm and pulls me toward him.

With both hands occupied, I’ve got nothing left to hit with, so I twist my arm around his until he has to let go.

“You get off me. Leave us alone. You can’t have my other eye.”

My heart is pounding and I can barely hear myself think above the whooshing in my ears. I watch Cody’s hands to make sure he doesn’t take out that knife again, since he seems dead set on taking my good eye tonight.

He holds his hands up like he’s surrendering.

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“You keep following me like we have business, but we do not,” I say.

“We kinda do,” he says, looking first at Nightlee, then at me.

“You have not once taken an interest in this baby, so don’t pretend you’re suddenly going to become the Bill Cosby father of the year.”

Cody shoves his hands in his pockets so deep that the change rattles at the bottom.

“Things are different now. I mean, maybe they could be,” he says so quietly that I almost don’t hear.

I don’t know what he’s offering, but if it’s him asking to move in with me because his pregnant girlfriend is tweaking all the time and taking his cash, well he is greatly mistaken.

“I don’t believe you, Cody Tigh. People don’t change and nobody does things just to be nice.” I shoo him along. “You get going now to your Kaidence and lie in the bed you made for yourself. Me and Nightlee are not your concern.”

I spin on my heel to make a big exit and of course my flip-flop gets all twisted and comes off. I bend over to fix it and Nightlee, suddenly upside down, is stunned into quietness. I hear Cody’s voice, very soft, right before he heads back to the Shipyard.

“I’ll make you believe.”

And the hair on my arms is standing up again.

At our place, Nightlee takes her bottle cold, sucking down formula with her eyes closed and cute little groans coming out after every breath.

While she eats, I put together a go-bag for each of us. We have to get out now because that Cody Tigh will dog you until you give in. And we have an appointment in the morning that I have no intimation on keeping.

I don’t have a car, but there’s a bus stop an hour outside of town. I was hoping to leave Sunday afternoon, when everyone’s glued to their televisions watching football, but it’s cooler to walk there after dark anyways. We’ll get to Silver City by dawn and on to Albuquerque.

I pull the folded stack of twenties from inside a sock and hope it’s enough for a ticket. I don’t know how much tickets are or if there’s even room on a bus for a stroller.

I pack so many cans of formula that the stroller basket under Nightlee scuffs against the road. I’m wearing my high boots with thick socks because even though I have a blacklight for picking out scorpions, I don’t have three D batteries and Dell’s is closed.

The sun is down and the blackflies dive-bomb both of us. There’s no way to keep the mosquitoes and no-see-ums off either, but at least it’s not completely dark. The moon is mostways full, so I can see the centerline of the road.

An animal brays in the distance. It’s a thick sound, all hoarse with pain. There’s something big getting attacked out there in the desert. A group of coyotes can take down something the size of a horse when they all work together. As a group, they’re stronger than the individuals that make it up. Even weak ones missing toes or tongues are dangerous when they’re in a pack.

My skin prickles as I see two headlights shining away from me up ahead. Up at the granite that makes me nervous anyway, for obvious reasons.

The animal cries again, low and gargling, like it’s choking on something wet. I fix my eyes on a bright spot on the horizon–the gas station near the bus stop–and move as fast as I can. I put my boot down and something slithers out from under it. I shiver, but keep on walking.

We’re passing the granite and I notice that I’m holding my breath. There’s something moving on top of the huge slab. It suddenly makes sense–the sounds I’m hearing. Someone’s killing an animal up there, which is stone cold stupid because if the rocks took animal parts, I wouldn’t be trotting down this road in the dark stepping on god-knows-what right now.

The animal yells again, but it doesn’t sound like a horse. It’s moaning like a person. I wish I’d greased up the stroller wheels, because they’re squeaking like the door of a haunted house right now, calling all sorts of attention to us.

Headlights light up the granite. It’s a flat slab, tipped over on its side, like a table about chest high. Someone’s on top of it, curled up in a fetus position like they’re doing a cannonball into a stone pool.

I watch to see if they make a move towards us, trying to keep those squeaky wheels from getting snagged on tumbleweed bits.

We’re mostways past the granite when the moaning person puts out an arm and drags themself to the edge of the rock. They ease down the side feet first. As the headlights catch them around the waist, I recognize that ass. It’s Cody Tigh.

He turns frontways and his pants are spattered with a spin art of blood. He can’t seem to lift his feet properly and his boots catch in the sand. He falls to his knees, shirt all soaked. He presses a rag to his face and stares into the headlights with a blank look like his mind isn’t completely there. He leans back against the granite and stops moving. I hear his heavy breathing from thirty feet away.

Cody’s other eye is still open, but doesn’t move when I wrestle the stroller closer through the sand, not even when I nudge his leg with my toe. His hands have dropped into his lap, but the rag sticks to his raw eye socket, hanging there like a limp white flag. The moonlit outline of a tiny, bloody ball sits on top of that great big rock.

“Damn you, Cody. What the hell did you do?”

He turns toward the sound of my voice and I brace my knees a little, ready to drag that stroller back to the road if I have to run.

“You don’t have to go now, CassieLyn. You both can stay.” His words sound like they’re rasping through half a bottle of whiskey. And really, I don’t blame him for that, seeing as what he’s undertaker here tonight.

There’s a sizzling sound, like those fajita skillets they bring out at a fancy restaurant. Cody’s eye is smoking in the moonlight on top of that granite. Hand to God, it sinks right the hell into the top of the stone. Sucked into the rock like a drop of water into a dry sponge. Makes me wonder if you could wring out the rock and get all our parts back.

I take a big sigh full of cool night air and catch a little no-see-um in my throat that makes it go tight. Or something like that. I clear it away and make a speech to that boy marinating in his own blood next to the granite.

“Take me with you.” The blood is drying fast. When Cody talks the smears on his cheeks flake off onto his hands like a tiny red snowfall.

“No, honey. You’re dead weight. I will take your car though. Just borrowing it until you get better, understand? You can’t drive until you figure out depth perception anyways. Trust me. When you’re all fixed up, you come find me in Albuquerque and–.”

He raises one shaking hand to interrupt me and I lean down close to his ear, smelling that penny red reek of fresh blood. He opens his mouth and I’m suddenly dreading what he has to say that’s so important he has to gouge out his eye to get my attention.

Being so close, I can see the seam between his prosthetic nose and rest of his face. I feel a pang in my belly. It’s not right when people give more than their due. Folks like that end up begging on the stoop like Mama Tracey. Thinking on that makes me put my finger across his sticky lips.

“Shh. I believe you, Cody Tigh,” I whisper. Under my finger, the corners of his mouth rise and I see his blue raspberry Jolly Rancher teeth.

Nightlee doesn’t wake up when I move her from the stroller to the back of Cody’s car. I shove the rest of our stuff in the trunk, on top of fishing gear and a couple of rifles. The keys are in the ignition and we’ve got half a tank of gas and $200 cash.

Cody holds up his hand as I put it in reverse. I don’t know if he’s saying goodbye or asking me to wait, but I keep going anyways and under the dash I give the finger to that big old rock that I never want to see again.

As we turn onto 152 North, I call Jack and tell him to go get Cody from the granite. If he stays out all night something’s liable to eat him. Save him from one coyote pack by handing him over to another. Sometimes, you just can’t win.

I’m ready for Jack to yell at me, but he’s quiet and respectful, like maybe he imagines I dug out Cody’s eye myself. Let him keep right on thinking that.

The radio is loud, playing a song about a man who lost his love then found her again. I flick it off and listen to the coyote pack get farther away instead. I’ve got a lot to think over. Apparently, there is a third kind of Cody in this world. I believe I have just met one of them.

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Toward the Banner of the King

by T.R. North

In times past I often dreamt I was driving a carriage through the deserted streets of an alien city. In spite of the strangeness of the city, it seemed utterly familiar to me; in spite of the utter waste it presented, whenever I paused, passengers would appear and alight.

They were all masked, as was I. Communication between us was unnecessary, as there was only one fit destination in the whole of the city. They were dressed in fine clothing, but it had the air of costume, and I could find nothing of their true condition in it.

No matter how many passengers I took on, the carriage never filled.

No matter how long I drove, we never drew so close as to see the crest on the yellow banners adorning the distant towers.

I did not miss those dreams when they ceased, but sometimes during waking moments I would try to tease some meaning from them. I spoke of them only once, to my dear sister Camilla, who scolded me for dwelling on such nonsense. “It’s a nightmare, that’s all, Cassilda.”

Her words might have been some comfort if the dreams had frightened me, but it was hardly fear they instilled. They left me with a sense of dread, but also with a sense of great anticipation. I would not wait trembling for the blow to fall, but wished to rush headlong to meet it.

It has always been thus with me. Of the two of us, I inherited our mother’s leaning toward mania; my twin received as her portion our mother’s penchant for melancholy. She named us, in one or the other of such moods, after the doomed princesses in that most scandalous of all books, The King in Yellow. She’d never read it, she later confessed, never even laid eyes on the work. The last qualifier I thought hard to credit, but she was insistent.

Camilla might have escaped remark upon her name had it not been paired with mine, and I believe this was the root of her resolution to shun me as much as she could bear once we grew older.

It pained me, but, I must confess, not so much as it ought. We were very nearly identical in form and figure, the only physical difference between us being a lighter tint to her hair and eyes. But she had a cast to her expression and features that transubstantiated her loveliness into something very nearly angelic while I remained of common clay, and seeing us together was enough to mar the effect of her grace. Relieved of the burden of my presence, she could flit about the periphery of fashionable circles without hindrance. Her beauty and sweet temper were all the introduction she needed, and her fairness was such that it always procured for her some admirer to nurse her through her periods of despondency.

But though she sometimes saw me as a weight about her neck, there were times when I shrank from her as a worm from sunlight. Standing next to me might have dragged her down to the mortal realm, but standing next to her showed me up as a denizen of the depths infernal. Every sensuous or vicious thought seemed stamped plainly on my features when compared to hers, and wholesome men shuddered to look on me as readily as the dissolute figured me for a confederate.

It might have led to some great crime or treason against nature if I’d had our mother’s temperament, but I am hardly so ambitious. I simply reordered my heart to feel contentment in my sister’s absences and resolved to make my way in the world as best I could without compounding our mother’s infamy.

We were told that she had once been a woman of no consequence, interested only in her paints and the affections of the man who would become our father. She had been deranged by his sudden abandonment, her fate sealed when it was discovered that she would soon be delivered of his daughters.

I have never for a moment believed that story, recited by our grandmother as a prophylactic against us taking up our mother’s habits. Our mother had been a fury determined to smash her likeness onto the facade of history, and she had raised us until our eleventh year. That she could ever have been other than as we knew her seemed incredible.

I had also read in her own words of how violently she had loved our father. I discovered her diary soon after her death and secreted it among my own childish books to keep it safe from our grandmother’s purging hands. Our father had been a man bound for the seminary, a path from which she’d tempted him only just long enough to conceive us. She’d been grief-stricken at his absence, surely, but in equal parts she had raged at him for his desertion.

He’d begged leave from her side to attend mass one night. She’d watched him slip into the churchyard like an apparition, then gone home again to attend to her salon and carouse with her companions until dawn. Only as the sun rose had she noticed his failure to return. A bribe paid to the watchman, a foul-visaged fellow who’d made her skin crawl, had bought the answer that no one had stirred through the very gate she’d seen him take with her own eyes.

She’d struck the watchman for a liar, and he had but smiled and begged her pardon and insisted that no living soul had stepped foot across the threshold between sunset and sunrise. In the end, with no further recourse, she’d wrenched her purse out of his hands and spit in his face to pay back his bad faith.

Our father was never heard from again, as if he’d fallen into some great crack in the earth and been swallowed up entirely. For his abandonment, he was condemned to an afterlife of haunting our mother’s paintings, cast always in the role of a tragedy or a suicide. Her Hyacinth, her Marsyas, her Actaeon, her Seneca: all the same silent prisoner mourning in the confines of his canvas purgatory.

The last great restraint on our mother’s behavior being thus overthrown, she established in her orbit Anarchists, proponents of free love, adventurers of both sexes, and even men reported to have been German spies during the war. Her aspirations as an artist outstripping both her natural talent and her taste for industry, she was better known as a model than a painter. The last mercy she showed us was to pose mostly en masque when lacking any other sort of drape, for we both came to resemble her strongly in face and form as we grew to womanhood.

It was a kindness shown more to Camilla than to myself. I took to brushes and pigments before I took to dolls and the needle. I had little more inborn genius than our mother, but my training was far better and my application to the task far more vigorous. I was thus able to earn my living as a painter, and, marked out as something of an oddity by my own rights, I had little concern for the memory of our mother’s behavior. Poor Camilla’s patrons required a less tarnished reputation in their dear muse.

At times she sat for me as a model, either as a sororal favor or whenever some rich benefactor insisted on a keepsake portrait. On those latter occasions I entered the house veiled and permitted no one but Camilla to watch me at my work, lest the sight of me blast the scales from her lover’s eyes. If they chafed at the restrictions, it was nothing to us; Camilla refused to sit for any artist but me. She insisted that it was because I alone could capture her proper being, and she would be immortalized by no other.

“They think there’s some magic to it,” Camilla had confided. “All this mummery about your veiling yourself and forbidding the servants entrance. I think it’s because no one loves me as you do, and you paint a perfection which exists in your keen eye and nowhere else.”

“It exists in the mirror every time you sit before it,” I told her. She gave herself too little credit, at times.

It was my business as a painter which first introduced me to Elliott. It is uncommon to find a model as pliant and good-natured as he, while at the same time being handsome and clean-limbed. He afforded me study after study of anything I could wish in terms of Olympic heroes, saints, prophets, and martyrs. I spent the finest months of one summer molding him into Lord Byron, Gideon, Perseus, and Saint Sebastian in turn. He was still when I wished it and talkative when I grew restless, and he proved to have an endless supply of amusing anecdotes from his time as a student in Paris. Is it any wonder I grew fond of the man, perhaps overly so?

He was a painter, though I had not then seen his work, and I was intrigued when he asked if I might model for him. I had already put him through his paces on canvas, wringing from him every shade of human emotion, depicting him in torment and ecstasy. That he wished a portrait of me to grace his own studio’s wall was an overture returned.

I proposed to wear a mask for the painting, after the fashion of our mother. It was some spirit of impishness that moved me to make the offer, or perhaps consideration for Camilla’s circumstances. It mattered not: He rejected the notion out of hand and laughed as if at a jest. My sweet face was the part of me he liked best, he said, and his determination on that point flattered me.

We began at once and continued as my own work permitted, though he refused to let me see the painting as it progressed. I must admit that his apparent reserve aroused my curiosity, for I had seen his handiwork on other subjects by then. He had cause for modesty on neither technical nor artistic grounds. The mystery pricked at me until at last I resolved to contrive some excuse for lingering the next time he went out, and so settle my mind.

The opportunity was not long in presenting itself; some fellow-scholar from his Paris days came calling unexpectedly, and I was left to my own devices while he saw to the man as best he could.

I stole toward the easel like a thief in the night, careful lest my footfalls or even my very breath should betray my intentions. A terrible fear gripped my heart as I approached, though I saw no reason for it in that moment, and I gently raised the curtain he’d drawn across the canvas. The scene which met my eyes seemed far too cheerful, far too domesticated, to provoke the devastation it wrought in my breast. I stood like Niobe, turned to stone and yet still able to weep; the woman Elliott had painted was not me but dear Camilla!

Undone, I turned from the dreadful sight. My eyes fell on the traitorous palette, left on the bench and marked with a hue far too bright for my own hair but the very likeness of Camilla’s. A sudden fury seized me such as I had never felt before. Even in my childish rages, even standing before the bonfire our grandmother made of our mother’s last possessions, clutching that salvaged diary and wishing blood and hellfire on her gray head, I had not been so furious with the world’s perfidy. It was as if I stood at the center of a great maelstrom, and the only decision yet to be made was whether to let it fall upon the work or the man himself.

I drew the curtain again and arranged myself carefully so that he would have no inkling that he was discovered. I had Eve’s example to guide me; no good came from sharing ill-gotten knowledge with faithless men. But I could not bear to face him in that moment, and so I left the studio without notice or accounting. I retreated to my own apartments to let the coals I’d lit in his blaze their fullest.

I resented Camilla’s loveliness. I admit it openly. Ever had she been the darling, the instant object on which all love fastened, while I skulked in the shadows. The barb of seeing her reflected in my lover’s eye when he gazed upon me sank deep, deep, and pierced me to the heart. But I’d have sooner unveiled that canvas to see a goblin squatting on the couch than my own form so transfigured. Elliott’s brush had robbed me of all, of even the dignity of being despised for myself. In his studio, I had become some base idol, a proxy by which he could worship his true goddess.

At last, alone in my chambers, I became mistress of myself again. Elliott and I had spent much time in each other’s company, and he had never mentioned my dear Camilla. She would sit for no one but me. She would be painted by none but my hand. It was possible that Elliott did not know her, did not love her, but had only been rebuffed by her as a pretty woman rebuffs a forward painter. If that were the case, I could consign his canvas to the fire, break his brushes, threaten to tear out his eyes for their sin, and be satisfied. But if he had paid court to her, had declared his love and dogged her steps and come to me after she had cast him out? I was resolved to ruin his happiness as thoroughly as he had wrecked mine.

I did not come to him again, and I bolted my door against him. I gave out that I was ill, afflicted with a fever, and he did not question it or try to gain admittance to see me. Thus alibied, I slunk after him like a ghost for the next fortnight and observed him without being seen. I could not have guessed that I was so far from his thoughts. I stood within arm’s reach of him on several occasions, and never once did his eyes light on me. I was farther from his notice than the sparrows quarreling over scraps of bread in the park, for at least those afforded him some amusement.

It became clear over the course of this haunting that Camilla was Elliott’s frequent companion. They were not lovers yet, but she had not turned him away. My heart broke at the smiles she bestowed on one so false, and after that I followed him no more. To Camilla I said nothing.

I tried to console myself with my paints, but it was hopeless. No matter my subject or palette, the portrait took on a jaundiced hue and a sickly shape. Everything I put to canvas, wood, or paper seemed shot through with the brass of my hair or limned with the gold of Camilla’s. If I made a brush of my tresses and bled the color into the paint, I could have achieved no more loathsome an effect.

With my paintings blighted and my mind thus disordered, I turned to the one remnant I had of our mother. It was a poor substitute for a mother’s embrace, or soothing words, or a soft hand stroking the brow and calming troubled dreams. But then our mother had not been much of a woman for those blandishments while it had still been in her power to bestow them, before death had stilled her savage heart forever.

When I had seen what our grandmother intended for our mother’s silks and paints and sketchbooks, I had slipped the diary into the paper wrap of a child’s Bible with a child’s cunning. The one was sacrificed to save the other, and in this way the diary had escaped the flames of perdition. Even once the book and myself were well and truly out of reach of the old woman’s matches, I had left the wrapper as a reminder of my first triumph.

I woke before the fire with a start, unconscious of having fallen asleep. The diary was open in my lap. When I closed my eyes I could still see dark stars picked out against the backs of my eyelids, and suddenly I saw the instrument of my revenge, as ready to my hand as a sword.

I spent the next day scouring bookshops, beginning with the meanest and making my way to the richer establishments. It was in a warm and seemingly wholesome place that I finally found the serpent I intended for the cradle of Elliott’s happiness. The proprietor spoke of the perfection of art and the smoked-quartz waters of beautiful Demhe, and he placed the book in my hands with a joy that almost saw him refuse my payment. The coins had taken on an unhealthy sheen in my eyes, though, and I pressed them on him with my gratitude.

The King in Yellow vanished into my handbag with a slither like a live thing, and at another shop I found a book as alike in size and weight as possible. Back in my studio and bathed in the bright sun, I worked like a thing possessed to effect the terrible transformation.

The harmless pages of the treatise on natural philosophy, I prised from their cover and gave over for kindling. The King in Yellow I handled as carefully as I might have a preparation of Paris green, refraining from touching its leaves with a bare hand or letting its words be exposed to an unshielded eye. A judicious application of glue and thread saw the tragedy neatly camouflaged, an asp exchanging its colors for those of the garden snake. That my sister’s smiles would break Elliott’s heart yet, I put pen to paper and scratched out an inscription urging him to read the slim volume cover to cover without pause. As I could forge my sister’s hand but not my sister’s mark, I left the thing unsigned.

The dagger in his breast would be anonymous, a fitting blow from the woman who’d offered herself bare but for a mask when first we’d ventured into this mire.

I wrapped the book in gaudy paper and left it for him with his concierge, then returned home to wait for the seed thus planted to bear its poisoned fruit. That night I did not sleep, instead alternately walking the floorboards as I might a promenade or attempting yet another flawed portrait. These works were even more soiled than those which came before, but I found that whatever ochre contaminant had crept into my paints displeased me less. The works I produced that night were hideous in the light of day, and I fled the apartment rather than keep company with them. They had, however, so distracted me that I had almost forgotten the work of the previous few days, and I was reminded with a jolt that Elliott might even now be laboring under the effects of my vengeance.

My feet were soon on the path to his studio, though what I hoped to see I knew not. I approached his rooms with a sense of dreadful excitement, only to find the front door ajar, standing open wide enough to provide passage for a cat. But Elliott owned no such animal, and I had to set my shoulder to the edge to force it open farther. I found an ottoman overturned behind it, and the rooms in a grand disarray beyond that.

It had been a man’s strength which had so ransacked the studio, but in the center of it all, unstrung and weeping, was my beloved Camilla. My eyes started from my head at the sight of her, and I recoiled when I realized what lay open in her hands.

She rose slowly to her feet when comprehension dawned on her tear-drenched face that her accidental enemy was there before her in the flesh. She waved the book at me, pointing savagely at the inscription.

“What wrong have I done you that you damn me so?” she cried. “What sin have I committed that this is your revenge?”

I saw then with compounded horror the book as she had seen it. The hand which I’d known Elliott’s hope would disguise as hers could never have been any but mine in her eyes. The lack of a signature had been no proof against her reading the inscription as a sisterly whim, to be humored as I had so often humored hers. Never has a blow struck been so bitterly regretted!

“Not you,” I swore. “Never you! It was meant for Elliott, and Elliott alone!”

How gladly I convicted myself of the lesser crime as a defense against the greater! She understood, then, and sank back to the couch with a heartbroken sob. I realized with a sudden wildness the only proper atonement. It was impossible to purge the book’s poison from her mind, but I could still drain the cup and join her in her sorrow. I picked up the fatal tome and turned the page, my eyes seeking now what they’d so scrupulously avoided before.

“You mustn’t!” Camilla plucked it from my hands with a shrill cry and hurled it into the fire, her beautiful features stark in her anguish. I protested, but it was too late. The flames consumed the wretched thing as readily as the morning sun wipes frost from the window panes, and my attempts to pluck it from the hearth served only to blister my fingers.

Camilla, satisfied that the danger had passed, returned to her seat and wept. Even in the most profound depths of her previous bouts of despair, I had never seen her so overcome. She cringed when I tried to console her, fleeing my touch and eventually bidding me leave. Terrified by the thought of what she might do if left to herself, I refused the order until she threatened to call the concierge to put me out bodily. His loyalty was such that he might have obeyed her orders, even those given in such a state. I relented, my coward’s heart quailing at the thought of being dragged into the street like a thief taken in the act.

I paced the city, blinded by grief and tortured by remorse. How careless I’d been in laying my snare! I could scarcely believe my sister’s fate, or that I had been the unwitting author of it. The sang froid with which I’d applied myself to Elliott’s destruction abandoned me. Elliott! What was he when weighed against Camilla? Nothing, less than nothing! I’d pardon ten thousand Elliotts offenses far worse if it would spare but one Camilla!

When my eyes cleared, I found that I had come to the banks of the river. I thought of filling my pockets with stones and wading into the water, of giving myself over to the current. It was perhaps wide and deep enough to unstain my hands, or, failing that, at least blot out my wickedness. The water was churned and slick, though, with a yellow scum dancing on its surface and turning to foam on its shore. Repulsed, I turned away and looked once more to Elliott’s studio. I would not abandon Camilla just yet, it seemed, or at least not in this way.

The smoke presaged one final disaster, and I found my return barred by policemen. Behind them a bucket brigade waged a fruitless war against the flames engulfing the building from which I had been so lately ejected. The upper floors, which Elliott’s studio had once occupied, had already collapsed. I searched the crowd, desperate for a glimpse of Camilla’s face. But even as I did so, I knew beyond doubt that she would not have fled the inferno. I continued my vigil until the building was embers and ash behind a skeletal threshold.

Dawn saw the street deserted, but for a black carriage coming slowly up the lane. It was an undertaker’s carriage, I saw, and upon closer inspection I realized that it had no driver. A cold calm descended over me, and I was not surprised when it came to a halt before the orphaned doorway.

I stepped forward and opened the door, waiting. In the dim and smoke-filthed light, a spectral procession of masked dancers dressed as though for a ball drifted from the ashes and climbed into the cab. Camilla I knew by her gait and bearing, Elliott by his artist’s hands. The last of them came arm in arm. Our mother’s hair spilled over the lady’s shoulders, and our father’s eyes peered from behind the gentleman’s mask. When all the shades had found their seats, I climbed onto the driver’s bench and took the reins. I was certain of our destination at last.

It was not long before the twin suns rose, and I bore the revelers ever closer to the castle walls. As the light glittered on the mirror surface of Hali, the Yellow Sign stood out on the banners, and I knew that we would soon be home.

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‘Till the Road Runs Out

by Luciano Marano

The ratty doublewide burned faster than they expected, and when the whiskey-fueled flames reached the meth lab in the trailer’s back bedroom, the explosion was likewise extraordinary.

Hicks gulped the last of the Jack Daniel’s, wiped his mouth with his hand. The flames were warm against his shirtless torso, his muscles hard and lean from his most recent turn inside. He leaned back on the Mustang’s hood, feeling toasty inside and out as he was tickled by the heat of the fire and the fuzzy embrace of booze. He ran a hand over his fresh buzz cut, crossed one booted ankle over the other and casually lobbed the empty bottle into the fire.

He cast an admiring glance at Dakota. He looked hot, like something out of a vintage heavy metal video, standing near the trunk in tight jeans, black boots and a tank top. Platinum highlights streaked through his long, raven-hued hair. Dakota hugged himself and watched his childhood home burn, a cocky smirk on his glossy lips. Hicks felt something at his feet and looked down to see a fat orange cat rubbing against him. He kicked it, not hard. It hissed. He chuckled.

Hicks shoved off from the car and pulled Dakota close, the warm cat pressed between them. He grabbed a handful of that luscious dark hair and pulled, just hard enough, the way Dakota liked, and said, “Fuck your pussy.”

“First things first,” Hicks said. They kissed, the fire roaring before them. “First we see the Duke, sell this shit.” He looked at Dakota, looked him up and down real slow, like he enjoyed every inch of the view. “Then we’ll take care of the rest.”

Hicks opened the passenger door, and Dakota slid in, petting the cat. Hicks slammed it shut and walked around, grabbing his jacket from the top of the pile of bags in the backseat through the open window. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was everything worth taking from this place — plus a shitload of crystal.

Whatever else he’d been before he became barbecue, Dakota’s father had been a hell of a cook. He’d offered up his whole stash before Hicks had introduced his face to a shotgun. A right nice gesture. Of course, they were taking the stuff anyway. And his money. And his guns. His blubbery apologies were years too late for Dakota, and Hicks had done worse things for less worthy causes. Killing that S.O.B. had been just the cherry on the sayonara sundae on their way out of this pit.

“That was so hot, babe,” Dakota said. “The way you made him cry.”

Hicks put on his coat and slipped into the driver’s seat, gunned the engine and spared one more look at the conflagration. “Didn’t I tell you I’d take care of it?”
Dakota hugged the cat. “Do you love me?”

“All the way, baby,” Hicks said. “Till the road runs out.”

He threw the hotrod in gear, peeled out and made for the highway, bearing down hard, chasing — and finally gaining on — his own little bloody slice of the American dream.

The Mustang devoured road. The engine roared like a hungry beast as they sped west into the humid north Florida night. Hicks turned his head and Dakota slipped a Marlboro between his lips, holding out the flaming Zippo. He sucked deep and pressed down on the gas. Ozzy wailed from the radio. Waffles slept on the bags.

“What kind of name is Waffles for a cat?” Hicks said.

Dakota only shook his head patronizingly, as if the question were too stupid to bother with, and lit a cigarette for himself.

Hicks said, “Good thing you’re pretty.”

Dakota rolled his sparkly eyes and smiled. He could be on his way to the grocery store instead of fleeing a murder scene. Hicks liked that. He’d been concerned that Dakota was all talk in the joint, and he’d watched real close for signs of doubt back at the trailer. When Dakota kicked things off, breaking a lamp over dear old Dad’s head, Hicks had known he was for real, and he had been glad. He’d had every intention of making off with the goods either way — alone, if need be. But that’s not how he wanted it. Not anymore.

Hicks wasn’t nervous either. He felt no guilt. The speeding was more for the joy of the ride, his love of his car and the rush of newly reclaimed freedom, than fear of getting caught. The cops didn’t come out here unless they had to. No neighbors in the trailer park would have called them. They all had secrets of their own to hide. The fire department would come, but even after they found the body it would look like another meth lab accident. By the time the so-called authorities figured how Brad Chambers actually bought it, they’d be long gone.

Hicks was calm, though he wouldn’t be totally at ease until after meeting with the Duke. He didn’t like drugs and he hated drug dealers, hated their fake-ass tough guy posturing and drama. Still, there was nobody better to help them unload a stash this size. The money wouldn’t be exactly fair, but it’d be pretty close. And for now, pretty close was close enough. He pulled a pistol from between the seats, switched it to his left hand.

“What are you doing?” Dakota said.

Hicks aimed at the highway marker and pulled the trigger without slowing down. A hole exploded in the green metal sign overhead, a crater replacing the dot above the “I.”

“Show-off,” Dakota said. His flirty giggle made Hicks think about porch swings and camp fires, sunny beaches and snow on Christmas, cold beer in the morning and hot sex at night. All good things.

Hicks replaced the gun. Dakota leaned over and laid on his chest, one hand moving under his jacket, lazily stroking the smiling devil tattoo on Hicks’ stomach. The kid was asleep in seconds. He wasn’t really a kid, of course, but he seemed so young to Hicks that sometimes there wasn’t anything else to call him. Hicks snuck a peek down, feeling Dakota’s warm, rhythmic breathing on his chest, and watched his lover’s closed eyes twitch. He’d been sneaking glances at the kid for days, thinking about not thinking about him, after Dakota first arrived inside, long before they actually met.

It had been Dakota’s first time in a real jail, and it had showed. Hicks had seen the kid take a few beatings, but he hadn’t stepped in. He’d been a career con doing his own time, and he’d only wanted to be left alone. Helping people got you killed, he knew that for certain, though Hicks had still not been able to help himself from thinking about the new arrival with the pretty eyes.

Theirs was not a meet-cute by any Hollywood standard, not even by porno standards. But we don’t get to choose who we love in this world, Hicks thought, no more so than we get to choose how we meet them. He had come across two big Aryans going at the kid, and he hadn’t thought twice. Having caught them with their pants actually down, he had all the advantage he needed and more.

By the time the guards responded, Hicks had painted that cell in a fresh coat of red blood. To the hole he’d gone, but it was a small price to pay. When he came back to the block, Dakota was waiting for him. They started talking. When Dakota got out, there were letters. Letters became phone calls, visits. By the time Hicks got out, they’d had a plan. He’d made a few calls, picked up his car, and come calling on Dakota.

Happiness isn’t just for pretty people, Hicks thought. It’s not just for rich people, smart people or even just for nice people. After a lifetime of tough breaks and raw deals, bad choices and worse luck, he figured it was only fair that even a broken-down con inching ever further past forty had the right to a shot at some happiness in this fucked-up world. Everyone should get a chance, and this was his. He knew he wouldn’t get another.

But that was okay. One was all he needed.

He’d always been a good shot.

A solitary figure was stumbling down the dirt road, and Hicks could smell his happy ending begin to rot.

There shouldn’t be anybody out here, he thought. That’s the point of the spot. The Duke didn’t hold court in Nowhere, Alabama for the scenery. It was a lonely place a million miles from anywhere a sane person would want to be. He flicked on the high beams, recognized the wounded man and realized that as bad as he thought it might be, it was actually much worse. He threw the car into park.

“Stay here,” Hicks said to Dakota as he grabbed the pistol and got out. Before him the man fell to his knees into a widening pool of blood, squinting dazedly into the car’s lights.

Slowly, Georgie turned to look at Hicks and his bruised lips spread into a lazy smile. “I got guts,” he said, voice cracking with a sudden, tittering giggle. “I got guts, Hicks. So much guts.”

He really did. They were in his hands.

Cupped near his waist, Georgie carried two handfuls of dripping intestines. A few loose ends dangled absently, having slipped through his fingers. Blood and bile oozed out of the ragged gash in his stomach beneath a silk shirt that had once been white. Dakota’s door opened, but Hicks waved him back. He grabbed Georgie’s shoulder and shook him. “Where’s Duke? Who did this to you?”

“Santa Muerte,” Georgie whispered.

As cold as it was, Hick’s heart was gripped by icy fingers of fear at the words. Saint Death. A folk-tale god, deity of the damned. The skeletal Madonna had become the patron saint of murderers, drug dealers and even more deranged members of the underworld. Hicks had seen tattoos and prayer cards in the joint. Most of it was harmless, a sort of grass-roots religion among the new outlaw class. Like all religions, though, it had fanatics, and they were maniacs.

This was as ugly as could be. Legit Death Heads were bad news: a cult of criminals who worshipped the grim reaper. If Duke and his boys had run afoul of lunatics like that, there would be nothing left of them to save — not that Hicks was interested in coming to their rescue. What he wanted was much more practical than salvation.

“Georgie,” Hicks said. “Did Duke bring the money?”

No answer. The gutted man swayed on his knees, stared into the headlights.

Hicks tried again. “Did Duke bring the money? Is it still at the spot?”

Georgie retched, the bloody vomit spilling over the mound of exposed guts he cradled in his arms.

Hicks grabbed the man’s slim ponytail, jerked his head back and pressed the pistol to Georgie’s crotch. He spoke very slowly. “Is my money still at the spot? Answer me, or I swear I’ll bury your balls with whatever’s left of your brother.”

“We can’t make a new life with fifty grand worth of ice. We need the money.”

“I’m going, too.” Dakota reached into the backseat and grabbed the shotgun.

“No,” Hicks said. “I’m just going to have a look.”

“Then there’s no reason I can’t go.”

Georgie moaned from the passenger seat.

Hicks said, “Don’t you bleed in my car, you stupid spic.”

Dakota held the gun by the slide and cocked it with one hand. He reached for the blue duffel bag that held the others and slung it over his shoulder, then smiled and blew Hicks a kiss. “Sissy.”

“Bitch,” Hicks said.

The night wind swept through the sparse trees and silence held sway over the world. One shot, Hicks thought. Make it count. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Waffles meowed in the backseat as he watched them leave, and Hicks couldn’t help but wonder: Was the fat bastard shouting encouragement or a warning at their backs?

The bonfire in the center of the circled vehicles burned bright, fueled by the bodies of the slain cartel members and the wood and shrubbery gathered beneath them. Duke and his gang were crucified, hoisted up on makeshift timber crosses, blazing away before the writhing orgy of carnage below them, a pyromaniac’s version of Jesus.

Hicks smelled the charred flesh before he saw it. He expected the worst, and he was not disappointed. At his side, he heard Dakota gag.

On the ground, the Death Heads painted each other with the innards of another body. They were naked, emaciated and awful to see. He’d heard that the true believers often starved themselves to look more like their gruesome god. Their skeletal fingers tore slippery pieces from the gaping wound in the dead man’s belly, smearing themselves with gore. The body had no head. Hicks saw three of the psychos off to the left, kicking something around like a soccer ball — something with long dark hair.

A putrid corpse dressed in white robes sat before the fire and the burning bodies in a ratty armchair. Dead flowers, along with severed body parts, were scattered around it. Burning red candles encircled the cult’s dreadful idol as it watched over the ritual.

Hicks and Dakota sank to the ground outside the light of the fire. Hicks counted at least eight of the cultists, maybe more in the clearing. Even if there had been nine or ten enemies, he might not have hesitated to take them on alone, armed as he was — he’d beaten worse odds. But Death Heads were something else.

Hicks eyed a black Durango with tinted windows on the far side of the fire. “There it is. That’s where Georgie said it’d be.”

Dakota shook his head. “No way.”

Hicks said, “I’m getting what we came here for.”

“We don’t need it. We’ve got cash already.”

“Not enough.”

A wail rose up from the gathering by the fire as the Death Heads finally clawed the eviscerated corpse apart.

The kid didn’t get it. He couldn’t possibly understand what it had taken Hicks a lifetime of eating shit to learn. Starting fresh, hitting the road with nothing, is only exciting when you’re young. But after starting from scratch again and again, after having nothing for so long, Hicks knew it wouldn’t work. Not in the long run, and this time was for keeps. Till the road runs out, right? This was his shot. He was going to do it right, and that included getting that money.

They’ve said that hope is free, that it didn’t cost anything to have faith. Bullshit. Hicks knew they were full of it, whoever they were, and that hope was plenty expensive. A clean start, safe home, doctors, all the operations — the life that Dakota wanted, that he deserved? Hicks tallied these mounting aspirations in his mind’s ledger. A better tomorrow cost money. There was a whole lot of hope in the gutter. Hicks had spent enough time there to know.

“Go back and start the car,” he said. “Be ready.”

Hicks grabbed the bag, got up and moved into the darkness before Dakota could say anything else. He knew that if he gave himself half a chance, he’d stay. He’d give in and they’d leave with nothing. He walked fast, making his way around the edge of the firelight and staying behind the cars when he could. Dakota’s scared, pretty eyes burned in his mind, and the shrieks of maniacs rang in his ears.

Just one more bad thing, Hicks told himself. Just be that guy one more time and you’ll have the rest of your life — your real life, it starts today — to get over it.

Better men have done worse things.

Hicks reached the Durango and opened the door without being seen. He found the suitcase in the backseat, just like Georgie’d said he would. He opened it and began stacking packs of bills into the duffel bag beside the guns. Every squeal and scream from the fire made him jump. When he was finally done, he started back.

About fifteen feet from the SUV, something struck the ground to his left. The head. A wild kick had sent the dusty severed head flying high, arcing through the air to land, bounce and roll to a stop right next to him. The cult was quiet as all eighteen of their hollow eyes turned and stared at him in unison. Hicks leveled the shotgun.

The Death Heads fanned out and began to approach. Hicks thought of ordering them back and dismissed it. Even if they understood, they would not care about his threats. They loved death. What other threat could he offer?

He tucked the shotgun under his arm, and drew two pistols from his jacket pockets. The Death Heads were closing in fast, clawing their own flesh with sharp, dirty fingernails, working themselves up into a frenzy of bloodlust.

Hicks opened fire.

The tall bald man on his far left took the first shot in the chest and went down quick. On his right, Hicks managed to hit a woman in the shoulder. She spun around and fell, but she kept crawling toward him. His second shot found her head.

Hicks kept shooting as he backed toward the Durango. The seven left were spread further out now, flanking him in the dark like Halloween decorations come to life. He kept shooting at the four he could see.

Reaching the car, Hicks dropped the bag of money and the shotgun by his feet. He rested against the vehicle and sited a man with a grizzly beard. The first shot hit his chest, the second, his neck. Hicks moved on instantly to a young girl nearing him on the right. She was close. He could smell her. The reek of shit, blood and vomit made his eyes water.

He pulled the trigger, and the gun clicked empty. He tossed it, tried the other one. Same story. He reached down and came up with the shotgun just as she lunged, emptying both barrels into her stomach and cutting her in half in mid-air. Splattered with a warm rain of blood and guts, Hicks dropped the empty shotgun and pulled another pistol from the bag. The only sound as he scanned the dark was the crackling of the fire.

Pain erupted in his shoulder, and Hicks screamed. From the roof of the Durango, a young boy wearing a necklace of bones raised a long wooden spear and plunged it down again. Hicks tried to duck, but the spear sank into his back. He stepped away and shot the boy, saw him fall silently from the roof.

Suddenly, he was knocked to the ground. The spear fell from his back, and the wind rushed from his lungs. A big man loomed over him, brandishing a machete. Hicks raised the pistol, but the lunatic brought the large blade down onto the back of his hand. Several of his fingers fell cleanly away, and Hicks saw himself drop the gun.

With a shrill cry mismatched to his size, the man raised the blade high above his head. Hicks, half-blind with pain and struggling to breathe, kicked as hard as he could up toward the man’s dangling genitals. The big man doubled over, clutching himself, as Hicks rolled out of reach.

Getting shakily to his feet, Hicks saw the other three coming closer: two women and a man with his long hair slicked back and shiny with fresh blood. Hicks reached into his boot and pulled out his hunting knife, tucking his wounded hand close to his chest.

A sound erupted from the far side of the fire, one Hicks knew well. Two bright spotlights grew large in the dark as Hicks’ car burst over the hillside, flying through the air like a V8-powered magic carpet. The Mustang came down hard and clipped the seated corpse idol. It sailed into the fire, chair and all, as the car skidded to a stop, flinging dust and gravel.

Hicks smiled as he saw Dakota at the wheel, looking mad as hell. He leapt out, blasting away with a sawed-off pump-action like he’d been born to do it. The girls scattered, and the long-haired man scurried behind a nearby pickup.

The big man with the machete, though, having recovered from the shot he’d taken to the balls, ran straight at Hicks.

Dakota, too far away to shoot without hitting Hicks, watched him and the man with the machete meet in a bone-snapping collision. The big man landed on top of Hicks, who thrust his blade desperately up, gouging into the lunatic’s left eye. Distantly, he felt the rusty blade of the machete push deep into his stomach, an enormous pressure crushing his neck.

His vision failing, Hicks tore his knife free from the big man’s eye socket and stabbed it into the side of his neck, pulling as hard as he could. The Death Head’s throat ripped apart like a soggy garbage bag, spilling blood and stringy bits of muscle and flesh down onto Hicks’ face. Still, the maniac squeezed harder at his throat and pushed the machete up deeper into Hicks’ belly. It felt like the tip was in his chest, poking a lung. Every breath was agony. The handle jutted out from the mouth of his laughing devil tattoo like a strange black tongue.

Dakota appeared above them suddenly and emptied a small .22 pistol into the big man’s back. The maniac finally slumped over and was still, and Hicks fell into blackness.

The screech of jamming gears roused Hicks. He forced his eyes open and saw the world rushing past outside the car. His hands were heavy in his lap, one wrapped in a stained sweatshirt and throbbing. A sticky, warm puddle squished beneath his ass as he tried to sit up. Pain, indescribable pain, pushed him back down.

Hicks tried to speak but found his tongue was too heavy. He blinked hard and saw the blue bag at his feet — feet he could not move — spilling over with cash. The kid would be OK. He could be anything he wanted, whoever he wanted to be. In countless mirror and window reflections over the years to come, that sly, sexy, beautiful smile would be Hicks’ memorial. On whatever face the kid chose, beneath any hair, that smile would sit resolutely below those wonderful, sparkly eyes, just for him. Not a bad legacy, Hicks thought. Better men have checked out with less.

And where was Georgie? Only Waffles stared back at him from the backseat, ambivalent, as if he were not surprised by these recent grim developments. Hicks decided he didn’t care. It was getting hard to focus. He threw up, and spit and blood spilled down over his chest. It pooled in his lap on the already sodden blanket that was wrapped tightly around him like a big plaid bandage.

But the road was ending. Dakota couldn’t see it yet, but Hicks could. A large black tunnel was approaching just up ahead, swallowing the horizon. They were speeding right toward it. Hicks saw the sun rising behind them in the side mirror. They were driving west. If you drive west fast enough at dawn, Hicks thought, it’s like you’re driving into the past, back into yesterday.

Hicks didn’t care for yesterday much, not any of the many yesterdays he’d known. He wished he could have been born later — ten, maybe twenty years from now. Maybe the world of tomorrow would have been his time. He’d been too early, and now it was way too late. But maybe that’s what it would take. Maybe he was the kind of guy that fueled the machines of progress. The pain flowed out of him then, sudden as a blink, and with it the regret. It was silly to regret. He’d had his shot, after all.

The world doesn’t care if you’re in love. It doesn’t care about your regrets or your promises. It doesn’t owe you anything. The world is full of monsters. They grow out of slinking under beds and crouching in closets, and they get worse. Once, a little boy named Gavin Hicks had thought you could beat those monsters if you were tough, if you made yourself scary enough, so he’d bloodied his knuckles and sharpened his tongue and cultivated a good glare and big, hate-filled muscles. He’d injected an armor of ink beneath his scar-covered flesh to hide the cracks.

It had worked, too, for a while. But he’d learned too late that grown-up monsters don’t fight like that. They’re carved of brick and steel, made of disappointment and regret, and they’re relentless. In order to take down those monsters, you have to have the right ammo and you’ve gotta be very quick. There are no second chances, none that ever really count. It’s not fair, but in the world of grown-up monsters, hate is a half measure and even love is most often a bullet of insufficient caliber. Maybe tomorrow it would be enough. Hicks had time to hope — quickly, just before the darkness got too deep — that it would.

Dakota was shouting. It sounded faint and very far away. They drove into the tunnel, and there was nothing but cool darkness and the lulling pulse of the engine.

“Evitative” is the titular and ultimate story of The Aversive Clause, the collection of stories that also included, ‘Sweetness,’ which ran as Pseudopod episode 445.

Says Edwards: “I’ve been listening to audial fiction for longer than I’ve been listening to music. I ‘read’ Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island, the works of Issac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, and countless others in this form starting around four and continuing onto today. My work is always written with the intention of being read aloud. So it’s really something to have a pair of stories in your archive. Thanks for keeping both horror and the spoken word going strong at the same time.”

Shawn Garrett composed the soundbed for this episode, which he dedicates to master avant-garde musicians/field recorders Annea Lockwood & Chris Watson. A list of links to sounds used from Freesound.org are below.

Once the oceans came up and covered the streets over it was like they weren’t ever there. No streets or dead Camaros or boys that abandon you when things get flooded and break down. There were just the tall trees with the high branches and water everywhere and the smudge of mountains I can see off on the horizon if I climb all the way to the top of the tree we use for looking at things. The water filled in all the gaps and erased our telemarketing jobs and our high-heels and the clubs we wore them to. But we’re safe up here, on the little platform Jo-Jo built in the trees. He found me wandering in the muck, cold and alone and his was the first face that I’d seen in forever that didn’t look scared or desperate or tired. The first one since the water and the bombs and all who didn’t try to take one more thing from me, didn’t try to steal me away or trick me into anything. Jo-Jo just smiled and his eyes smiled too and even though he’d lost his words already I knew he meant well. And he showed me how to climb the trees and get up to his platform where there’s nothing to do but climb around, eat the berries and the appleish things that dangle off the branches like Christmas ornaments and screw all afternoon long and laze about watching the world disappear. Jo-Jo catches the birds that build their nests and try to eat our fruit, and then we eat the birds too. That’s about all we do.

That’s about all the kid in my belly will do, too. But the kid won’t know any different. It won’t think there was ever something other than the trees and the muck and the water and the men who come by every now and again in their canoes and their ugly paddles and their terrible broken whispers.

Four Hours of a Revolution

by Premee Mohamed

Rebels, like vampires, prowl by night, sleep by day; they are short on everything in the besieged city – bullets, socks, soap, bread – but mainly they are short of sleep, for they fight under starlight, hide under sun in secret places. And yet their enemies are most vulnerable at night when, like all good civil servants, they retire to their houses and lock their doors. Until they swap schedules neither side will eliminate the other.

So the revolution is easy enough to find as I whisper up the wall of the apartment complex, slide under the half-inch of space left by the open window. They will not open it further, even though the little boarded-up living room is intolerably hot. As it is, they sweat profusely in their sleep, even the lucky few shaded by the walls.

One has, deliberately I assume, curled up in an armchair under a poster reading ‘PUNK ISN’T DEAD BUT IT WOZ UP AWFUL LATE LAST NITE.’ On the poster, two men sleep in a train seat, cartoonishly rendered in hot primaries on a black ground. The rebel in the armchair echoes their pose, but instead of a tired friend she cradles a stolen police rifle, its distinctive silver finish oversprayed with matte black paint, the camera blocked with a glued-in coin. The police carry them proudly, counting on the reflected glare to carry their message far ahead of them; the rebels carry them only at night, counting on stealth.

It is this girl, Whittaker, in the armchair, in this war, that I am here to claim. In due time, as is her right and my duty. For I am Death.

War, we joke, is very good for business. It is a joke because we must deal with both sides, or all three sides, or at least on one memorable occasion, all six – no alliances were made between the infuriated families, as it so happened, and the souls of all those disparate enemies were still swiping at one another as we bore them off.

There is another joke, which I first heard a thousand years ago.

The lathered courier arrives at the palace all aflutter, and drops to a knee to deliver his desperate message: Highness, highness, the peasants are revolting!

O yes, says the king, lifting a scented handkerchief to his nose, I know; but were you not tasked with bringing me news?

Whittaker is young, and I think a typical rebel, or anyway typical of the revolutions I have seen – when the war descended like a guillotine blade separating the body of the populace from its head, she was already on the blade, all unaware. I have known of her since the moment I arrived in this doomed city. Orphaned young, a child of the streets, swindling, stealing, cajoling, cozening, switching loyalties as easily as she swapped her nail polish, prepared for whatever would find her food and shelter for even so long as a single day. Now, she has found – though she does not know it – the people at whose sides she will die.

I float past the others, asleep in heaps on the floor, ringed in sweat on the rugs like the chalk outlines they used to put around the dead. As is customary in situations like this, one person is snoring so loudly he could be confused for a diesel generator; and as is also customary, they have all been so tired for weeks that no one wakes to roll him over. I take up a position behind the girl’s armchair, not to leave her till I have completed my duty. I suppose, given the amount of artillery in this room, it will be a gunshot wound, perhaps even friendly fire. I know they have already said they would die for each other. Hollow laughter. They would die also because of each other, and many have.

This revolution began with, of all the supposedly innocent things, a curfew. Those in charge insisted that it was meant to be temporary, but when it became permanent, the first grumbles began low and slow, rising as arrests began to be made for breaking curfew, and then the inevitable consequences of jailing too many in too small places, and the dawning realization, by a bewildered populace, that the jolly, maroon-uniformed neighbourhood policeman they’d seen all their lives, stopping to compliment their herb gardens or return their lost cat, was the enemy. And one day a few months ago, a half-brick came whistling from the fourth floor of an apartment building not far from here, and the policeman it struck died at once. In my arms he opened his eyes in shock, uttering, as we flew away, only two words: “That hurt!”

The open window slammed shut, but not fast enough; the policeman’s partner raced into the building, and shots were fired, and the protests the next day became a mob. No more mobs now; most people have fled into the countryside, starving on weeds and stolen sheep. The remainder are unable or unwilling to leave, cruelly abandoned by their families with a note and a few spare oxygen tanks, or – like this little troupe – determined to stay and fight.

The first thing they did when they arrived at this hideout was sweep it for microphones, cameras, watchbugs, boobytraps, anything the enemy might have installed. The second was to loot it to the bones, of course; there are twelve of them, they’re hungry, they’ve been hungry for months, you can’t shoot if you don’t eat. Exclamations of pleasure as they distributed clothing from dressers and closets, a dozen shameless apostles stripping in front of one another, fresh white underpants and socks, trousers and skirts pinned in place around waists that were, by now, mostly pelvic bone. And from the back of the closet Whittaker pulled a tremendous ancient thing, perhaps a costume, a glittery red ballgown. They all marveled at it for a moment; then she pounced, and butchered it with her pocketknife, and spent an hour sewing the crimson silk into a flag that could be folded small and placed in a pocket.

I hope she gets a chance to wave this flag before she dies. Though of course, we are not supposed to hope anything.

But I am a very old Death.

Now, the building trembles as the army’s great, multi-legged tanks patrol the street below. I suppose they think they are tiptoeing. In their sleep, the rebels stir, but some sixth sense will wake them if there is true danger. Anyone without that sixth sense has left the city one way or another. Indeed, that is the revolution’s saving grace – there are so many empty apartments and houses, so many abandoned offices and stripped businesses, that the police cannot find them each night. Only the dark spirits of their nightmares, and, of course, me. They’ve lost seven people in four months. Not, if I may so compliment them, having seen a war or two in my time, a bad mortality rate. But I think they would not appreciate my compliments.

I do think they would appreciate knowing that there is a government man hidden in this group, waiting to connect with their larger organization to spring his lethal trap. But there is no way to warn them.

The tanks creak and whine, fade into silence at the park at the end of the street, the noise eaten by the trees. And Whittaker wakens, beads of sweat trickling down her face, and turns to look at me. I freeze.

This has happened before; there are so many sensitives now. She cannot truly see me, only a whirl of indistinct impressions. I know if she fears the gun, I will appear as the darkness of a barrel; if she fears the sea, I will be the cry of gulls and the black in which the abyssal fish swim; if fire, no more than a strange brightness.

The man in the blue shirt, with the cityscape printed on it, I want to tell her while she stares. Over there, asleep underneath the desk – do you mark him? Kill him. Or your revolution will fail.

After a moment, she closes her eyes again and settles back on the velvet chair, and sleeps while the tanks rumblingly return for a second pass.

Just before nightfall, when the sun’s reflection still protects them, they eat again – cans of ravioli and beef stew, cold pea soup and artichoke hearts – and whisper about the night’s plans. Their lowered voices are meaningless; the spy can wear no recorder their detection gear would have spared, not even the lapel-pins the army uses, but he has a memory, and he has a mind, and he has been waiting for this. “Tonight, we must meet with the greater cell,” their leader says. All nod. “Eleven. I know the place. We must go together.”

Three hours from now. Till then, they will proceed as normal: “We must kill the army bastards, kill the police. And we must slow them if we cannot kill them – disable or destroy their damned tanks and the stilted fortresses and even the spotlights and the ‘thopters.” They nod. A drone the size of a pigeon glides silently past their window, unseen by everyone except Whittaker. She does not speak up. It did not detect them, or it would have turned to stare in the window.

She does not like this new leader, Falkenberg; she thinks he does not know enough of the streets they defend. To the others she only concedes that Falk has a tidy mind, since he was once a professor; the others like that, feel safe in the structure he builds for them with his plans.

The dusk fades as they talk. In the cooling room they mop sweat, clean their guns again, stuff pockets with facecloths or handkerchiefs to dry their fingers before they shoot. Two of them count and recount the ammunition. So many incendiary grenades, so many batteries for the shoulder laser, so many of this type of round, so many of that. They all carry knives too, and are experts at foraging for found weapons – a fencepost, a chunk of concrete, anything flammable.

Will they say a prayer before they leave the sanctuary tonight? No, it seems not. I follow as they leave, silently, in groups of two, down the building’s remaining usable staircase. Their boots are so worn-down they are as silent as woollen socks. Not like the army, not like the police, who herald their arrival with the faraway metallic ringing of reinforced nanoceramic soles, the stuff of bulletproof vests. The rebels are very good at face and leg shots now. It is a dance, the government and the rebels – one moves a foot forward, the other back; they touch hands, bow, turn, follow the steps. One cannot move without the other.

Despite the long hunt, and the privations and anxiety of war, Whittaker is pretty still, and recognisably the girl she was when that brick came sailing from the upper window – vain, fey, impulsive, as confident in her ability to cajole a snack from a cop as to somersault from the top of a church. With her clippers long gone, her precisely maintained lifelong flattop has become a soft, ragged black cloud, somewhat longer at the sides from constantly being crushed beneath a hat. The others nod to her beauty as an acknowledgement only, not a salute; it will not save her, it will not save them, but they must nod to it, sacrosanct and chaste for now, while she is so young as to be off-limits. This does not seem to deter the government man, who trots next to her as they move into the streets.

“I’m Christopher,” he whispers. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What’s your first name?”

She gives him a look. “Miz.”

As they trickle into the street I see what lies in their path first, a knot of perfect night not dissimilar to their own – the soldiers in black stealth gear, the lights of their tanks and cannons covered with electrical tape. Falk pauses at the head of the rebel column, and glances back, his eyeglasses catching the only light in the alleyway. There will be a firefight. I head to the roof and seat myself on a gargoyle to watch; perhaps I will be needed in a minute, perhaps not.

The first hit goes to a rebel, their sniper. She was not aiming at the troops; a moment after the riflecrack, the support strut under the main cannon gives way. Curses and cries of dismay drift down the street like smoke. The rebels show their teeth in the darkness, not quite smiling. It was worth giving away their position to decommission the big gun, which could have brought the entire building down.

Now, at Falk and the sniper’s hissed direction, they emplace themselves, lay guns and lasers along forearms, squint, shoot. Soldiers fall and writhe like shadows printed across the street, their protective armour crushing organs. I scan the skies for their Deaths, see nothing. Oh well.

The brawny old man with them for the last month, has fallen; Whittaker slides his grenade belt from beneath the body and joins the sniper on the rooftop. The other shooters are spread out amongst the buildings, flitting catlike between floors and doorways. I feel Whittaker’s warm breath on my neck, fast, excited. She has never used a grenade before, only watched the others throw them.

Now, she stands, winds up, hurls two into the massed darkness below, her long teenager’s arm unfolding like the killing claw of a praying mantis. The first grenade is shot out of the air; the second bounces off a boot and rolls, detonating underneath a parked car. She curses, but the grenade has not failed; it has transformed the car into a secondary grenade. Shrapnel rises almost to our eye level, seven storeys up, and falls in a twinkling rain. Only now do I see Deaths, nearly invisible against the dark sky, like curlicues of smoke as they pass the few streetlights that remain. We nod to each other professionally as the soldiers’ souls are gathered into arms as soft and nebulous as feather coverlets.

The soldiers gather their wits, return fire, bullets and lasers pocking the building’s facade. Fragments of gargoyles plummet; the soldiers dodge bulging stone eyes, razor-edged horns. One of the rebels drops, the cigar-chewing man who never gave a real name. A contingent of soldiers is dispatched to capture him, but they are mowed down by rebel backup , invisibly perched atop a wrought-iron fence with a semi-automatic pulse rifle. The red light illuminates pools of blood as dark as ink.

Whittaker nods to the sniper and they flow down the stairs to rejoin Falk and the others. “We’re behind schedule,” someone says. “We need to cross half the city.”

“We’ll make it,” Falk says.

No one seems to see Christopher emerge from his foxhole, pale face smeared with someone else’s blood, perhaps even one of their own, his thin lips overpainted with it into a friendly red smile.

They skip across the city like a thrown stone, keeping to the shadows, leaping to rooftops and over fences as needed to avoid patrols. It is not, as their previous leader stressed, that they wish to overthrow and take over the government; it is that a reasonable government must be installed, and until this occurs, the war continues. A long and unfunny joke, a joke of months’ duration, with so few people left in the city to be governed. Should the army and police throw down their guns, and the dictator in her crystal castle relinquish all power, the new government’s subjects will consist almost entirely of revolutionaries.

“I need to talk to you,” Whittaker whispers to Falk as they run.

“At the meeting,” he says.

“Before that.”

“There’s no time.”

Ah, ah. So she does know. She must know. How interesting. Christopher is running at her side, a wheezy lope, flakes of dried blood fluttering from his face; she effortlessly speeds up to lose him.

Their meeting is, of all places, in the old city hall, abandoned forty years ago when the new building went up downtown. This one is too close to the river and is no fit seat for government – crusted with moss and ringed with black mould, usually half-submerged, stinking of mildew, disdained even by the city’s big silver rats, who hate to be flooded out. Only cockroaches survive here, and they flee the rebels’ lights as the troupe creeps through the outflow’s brick tunnel, dry in the summer heat. I take the point position, watching for movement behind us – nothing but the things with antennae, who defiantly watch me back. Christopher has fallen behind in the tunnel, is surreptitiously writing on his phone, the light of its screen hidden inside his blue shirt so that he seems to walk in a bubble of ocean.

The leader of the main cell and the others wait in the upstairs hall, former home of visiting dignitaries, weddings, awards ceremonies, former home of the ignorant and rich. Whittaker’s cell is late. They cross the rich, crumbling carpet and find seats on the piled desks that ring the room. In the centre is a heap of debris – cinderblocks, tarps, discarded timber, broken furniture – surmounted with an elaborately carved door, saved from the warping mould on the first floor. The ancient chandelier above this rubbish throne awakens, feebler than the moonlight entering through the perforated glass dome. The hall slowly becomes a place of golden and flickering shadows.

A small man – this must be the one who leads the leaders – climbs the heap and balances on the door, cradling a painted police rifle in his arms. He is brown and freckled, beard still dark, hair the kind of mixed salt-and-pepper that nearly looks blue. “We have sentries at all the cardinal points, at every entrance below and above ground,” he says, his tone casual, as if he is informing meeting attendees where the washrooms are. “Your cell leaders have been briefed on escape routes should we be discovered. The – ”

“Falk,” the girl is whispering again; I drift closer to listen, unable to stop myself. “We’ve got a rat.”

“Who?”

“I…I can’t tell you. He’s here.”

“What?”

“I said he’s here.” She cannot lower her voice any more; at this volume, no one could hear her except for me. Falk isn’t paying attention anyway; the little man on the door is still speaking.

“Call him out,” she urges, and it seems that she has his attention now; Christopher, a few seats down, is staring fixedly at the heap of rubble, sweat trickling down his face, rehydrating the blood that drips onto his shirt.

“I asked for proof,” Falk whispers. “You said you didn’t have any. You didn’t say ‘I’ll tell you later.’ You said ‘I just know.'”

“I know what I said. And I know I’m right.”

“Well you can’t just say things like that,” he says. “That’s what the government was saying when this all started, you know. ‘I don’t know how they’re bad, I just know.’ And then the raids, the guns. So think about that before you start throwing things around that you can’t back up.”

Their whispers are attracting attention, though Christopher still stares straight ahead. Falk shrugs apologetically to the others, and turns his back on Whittaker to listen to the leader, who is now discussing how best to smuggle recruits from the surrounding countryside into the city.

Outside city hall, soldiers assemble in silence, readying gas nozzles on light metal tubes, loading guns with bullets of lead and rubber, patting their vest for grenades. Helmeted and shielded in glossy black, they resemble unfamiliar insects, perhaps the ants that mass together to kill larger prey. It is eleven forty-five. Whittaker does not have long.

The first gas nozzle pierces the window that lines the east wall, and clogs at once. But a thin spurt of gas gets through, and then it is pandemonium as the rebels realize they are surrounded, a few of the leaders gathering their people for escape, a few for a fight.

Whittaker shoulders her rifle and looks at the few of her own that remain, armed with grenades and pistols and lasers and even, for some reason, a hatchet, looted from the lower level. Their heads swivel as one at the musical tinkle of breaking glass: Christopher smashing windows to give the incoming soldiers access. “Here, over here!” he shouts. “That one, there – with the beard – he’s their leader! Take him alive!”

Before anyone can draw a bead on the spy he’s surrounded in a gleaming shell of shields and upraised batons, nets and muzzles. His smug, shiny face disappears behind this wall as the invasion begins to destroy the actual room, the soft wooden floors giving way under tons of boots and equipment, disintegrating ceiling plaster knocking drones from the air. Rebels tread these tiny spies underfoot, revelling in each expensive crunch. As the walls are shredded by laser fire, roaches skitter for cover, find none, race each other in a panic down the stairs like a shining, gold-brown river.

The soldiers have come en masse, but they cannot fight in this space; it is chaos, and they are untrained for chaos. Their Deaths are legion compared to those who come for the rebels, who have entrenched themselves behind discarded furniture, popping up to shoot or toss grenades that ignite the tear gas nozzles and burn it off in clouds of harmless blue flame. A rebel has gotten at least one incendiary out a broken window; below, screams rise like the flames from the gas canisters. Disorganization frightens these soldiers more than their enemy.

Whittaker is out of rounds. Instead of spending precious seconds reloading she snatches a hatchet from someone’s back, chops at a soldier’s unprotected arm – not quite through – and seizes his silver rifle. She is not a crack shot but she is a good one, and black-clad bodies spill bonelessly to the floor. Falk finds her and they fight back to back for a few minutes, grimly ignoring each other, the ‘You were right’ and ‘I know I was right’ unspoken for now, and if they are to have this conversation they will have to hurry, as she only has three minutes left. There are many soldiers in the room now, a scrambling wasps’ nest of armour and upraised weapons, black and amber. They trip over their fallen, misfire, hit one another, disappear through holes in the floor. Their numbers are shrinking.

Moving as gracefully and casually as if bullets did not envelop her, Whittaker removes the folded flag from her pocket and shakes it once to unfold it, the dead woman’s silk ballooning out with a crack. The pocket she sewed into the edge slides, as she must have designed it, over her pilfered rifle. And she is climbing the hill of rubble one-handed, lifting the gun from the dust and blood, and waving it over her head, a slow billow of crimson that stops everyone in their tracks, and a final tracer screams from the darkness and ignites the silk and still she waves, the blaze will extinguish itself in a moment, still she waves.

If only the dress had been white, I think. This is no flag of surrender. It is the opposite, if such a thing exists. A flag of victory. Her teeth and eyes are lit in gold, gaze meeting mine.

And it is at this specter of victory that Christopher aims, the click of his scope loud in a momentary silence, and I cannot stand it any longer, I will not, and with the tip of my wing I nudge loose another chunk of masonry – yes, that would have fallen anyway, I tell myself, and that is what I will tell the Council when they ask – that lands near him with an explosive dusty thud. He yelps, instinctively drawing his gun arm over his head.

It is his last mistake. Whittaker sees him, camouflaged there in the grime, smoothly lowers the rifle, as if the burning silk did not pass an inch from her face, and fires.

His face vanishes in a puff of blood, and I catch his soul a moment later, my claws clacking against his Death’s. Our eyes meet in a moment of embarrassed suspicion. I must brazen this out.

“Madame, he is mine,” I say. “The Council must have made a mistake. It has happened before. There are many of us tonight, as you can see.”

“Yes,” she says uncertainly. “All these lives on a razor’s edge, I suppose. Could be some…confusion, sir.”

I do not break my gaze, and finally she shrugs, floats off, her wings wafting a scent of rot and blackcurrant. In my arms the spy’s soul is heavy, the leaden weight of guilt, so that he does not even thrash or seek to escape my embrace as I rise with him into the coolness of the night.

Below, Whittaker’s face is upturned for a moment only. Then she frees her rifle from the smouldering remains of the flag and walks off into the darkness.

A Doll Full of Nails

By Ville Meriläinen

1.

“Once upon a time,” the doll began, “there lived a god who feared the dark.

“He cast a shadow over his creations and heard them whisper his doom when he turned away. He feared them so much he stole fire from the other gods and gave it to the tiny creatures, hoping it would take away the dark in their hearts. Instead, they set the god on fire, and that is how the sun was born.”

“Fascinating,” grumbled the doll maker, setting a glass eye into the socket of his latest masterpiece. This one, he hoped, would be as mute as most, unlike the one sitting on his shelf. “And patently untrue. Be quiet, now, or you’re getting another nail.”

The doll sat quiet for a time. It watched the doll maker work—or so it felt—until he was finished and set the new doll upright. This one had bright blue eyes, flaxen hair and a skirt the miller’s wife had made for their daughter’s sixth birthday. On her seventh she disappeared, never to be found, and in place of a gravestone they wanted a doll so lifelike it would be as though she had never left.

The doll maker watched his creation with welling sickness before sealing it in a box. This was good use of his skills, for he had long studied the art of imitating life. If it gave people comfort to have dolls reminding them of their children, how could he say no? Doing so would have made him a hypocrite, after he had given his wife the creature now sitting with its legs dangling off the shelf.

Even so, he dreaded another one of his works would grow a tongue of flesh he did not place, and then do nothing with it but lie.

“Once upon a time,” the doll shaped like his son began, “there lived a warlock who studied children. He lured them into his gingerbread house and broke them into little pieces so he could see how they were made. When he pieced them back together, he never learned how to give them back the spark of life, and that is how dolls came to be.”

“That’s enough,” said the doll maker. He reached for the box of nails on his desk and took one out, lifted down the doll with a little boy’s smile and the fine clothes his wife had made. He pulled its mouth all the way open and yanked out its tongue, drove a nail through and spun it. When the tongue would twist no further, he set the nail sideways and closed the mouth around it. “I’m going to bed now. If you speak during the night, I will throw you away.”

Guilt pricked him even as he said that, and he knew the threat was empty. The doll maker toyed with the thought of leaving the doll downstairs in his workshop, but when he stood, he cradled it in his arms and brought it into his bedroom, where he set it by the foot of his bed before lying down.

2.

Once upon a time, the doll maker dreamed, there lived a little boy who walked in the woods.

He was small and the woods were great, and so every time he went, he got scared and cried for his father.

Every time, his father came, and the weeping boy said a monster had touched his hand.

His father told him there was no such thing as monsters and that he should not come here if he was afraid.

But the boy loved the woods, and so he went, every day, and so he cried, every day.

Until one day, his father was sick of the boy’s lies and did not help him.

The crying went on for a time, but then it stopped,

so suddenly the father’s heart stopped with it.

His heartbeat returned, but the boy never did,

and that is why—

3.

The doll maker awoke with a start.

Pale sunlight filtered in through the curtains, making dust dance. He shoved aside the blanket, found his face streaming with sweat. “Did you speak just then?” he demanded, leaning shaking hands on shaking knees. “Well, did you?”

The doll said nothing, even though the doll maker knew it had removed and swallowed the nail.

“One of these days,” said the doll maker and lifted the replica of his son, “I will cut out that tongue if you don’t keep your mouth shut.” The doll smiled vacuously at the threat, one more nail rattling in its belly as he carried it downstairs.

The miller came by that afternoon. He opened the box and gave a wet groan at the mimicry of his daughter, pressing a fist to his mouth. “You know,” he said, when strength found its way back to his voice, “I thought this would be a horrid idea, but she—it—looks so like her it might just be what we need.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said the doll maker, though it sounded false even to him.

“Tell me, did your talent help you and your wife after your son drowned?”

The doll maker winced. “I don’t much care for what came of it, though the doll was dear to her.”

“Hum. Perhaps you’ll craft one to look like her, if you’ll come to find the house lonely.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

Now the miller winced. “Forgive me—I shouldn’t say things like that. It’s the sorrow speaking, and I forget not everyone is as dreary as me.”

When the miller left the house on a hill, reached the path and turned towards the town, the doll maker fetched a flower from the kitchen. He went down after the miller, but instead of heading to town, turned towards an orchard at the base of the hill. He removed his hat and held it against his tightening chest as he approached the gravestone surrounded by apple trees.

“Hello, darling,” he said, kneeling to set the flower on the mound. “It’s one of these mornings. You started a trend. I should be grateful, but my purse isn’t the sole thing that’s heavy.” He dusted the stone and sighed. “I know I promised, but I can’t stand the doll any longer. Would I be remiss to throw it out?”

He listened to the wind brushing trees, to the lap of waves on the lakeshore. His wife hadn’t spoken aloud in a long time, but in the wind was a memory of her singing. She’d known a different one for every task: One for planting roses, one for digging weeds; one for gathering apples, one for the honeybees. Now the hives were empty, the patch overrun with daffodils, and around the doll maker were rotten apples he hadn’t bothered to collect.

And so, even though his wife could not speak, he was reminded of all the other promises he’d failed to keep. The doll maker returned to the house and set to working on the order of the mayor, who had finally given up on finding his nephew after weeks of searching.

4.

The doll maker woke up on the sofa, eyes bleary and head aching. He had only meant to rest for a minute, but night had crept in during his nap. The doll sat in the armchair beside him, head lolled to the side. As soon as he sat up, rubbing his temples, it spoke.

“Once upon a time,” the doll began, “there was a corpse who wanted to be a boy again. When it told lies, its arms grew, until it could reach up from the bottom of the lake where it had sunk.”

The doll maker froze, slowly facing the glass stare.

“Every day, a living boy came to the lake, and the corpse whispered it was safe to swim.”

“Be quiet,” the doll maker rasped.

“But when the corpse reached from the depths for the boy’s hand, he was repulsed and cried for his father.”

“Be quiet!” the doll maker snapped, grabbed the doll and threw it at the wall. It fell askew, was silent a moment, then rolled over to face its maker.

“One day,” the doll went on, as the maker ran for the box of nails in his workshop, “his father didn’t come, no matter how much the boy cried. ‘There’s nothing to fear,’ the corpse said, over and over. Every time it did, its arms reached a little further, until its fingers locked with the boy’s.”

The doll maker rushed back, a nail in his hand. He found the doll sitting upright. Before he reached it, it said, “And that is how I came to be.”

He pulled out the doll’s tongue, drove the nail through it and spun until it would turn no further. Even then, he twisted with all his strength in an attempt to pry the tongue loose. When he found the effort fruitless, he set the nail sideways and closed the mouth around it. Then he carried the doll to his workshop.

He set it on its back on the table, took out another nail and his hammer. He placed the nail against the doll’s chin and struck.

The nail scraped along the face without so much as a groove. He tried to bind it with strings, but they slid away as though the doll was oiled. He tried screws, but they dug in no better than the nails. Finally, he smashed its head with the hammer. Even the glass eyes survived the blow without the slightest cracks.

“I’m throwing you away,” he swore. “And I’m never making another doll. Is that what you want? Then be quiet and there will never be more.”

The doll smiled vacuously at the threat.

The doll maker made to lift the miscreation, but when his hand touched its back, he was overwhelmed with a terrible sense of loss. He jumped back as though scorched, steeled his mind and tried again.

Though guilt no longer kept him from discarding it, he was physically unable to lift the doll, even though he had just carried it in. He had accepted the doll’s behaviour as a sign of his own insanity, but now questioned how far even madness could reach.

He staggered away until he bumped against his chair and collapsed into it. Silence fell heavy on the room, as though a noise that belonged there was absent. He wondered if the doll was trying to speak, tongue slowly unfurling until it would swallow the nail.

“I’m throwing you away,” he repeated, with effortful defiance, and was surprised by how quiet the words were. “First thing tomorrow. The mayor gets his doll, but others will have to resort to markers, or find some other way to grieve.”

The doll said nothing. The way it stared at the ceiling now seemed petulant, purposeful ignorance of its creator. The doll maker groaned at the notion. It had no capability for petulance, no matter how near to being alive it seemed. I am a madman, he reminded himself. If I invited someone to lift it, they would do so without trouble. In fact, that is what I’ll do. If I cannot do it myself after a good night’s rest, I will ask the mayor’s servant to dispose of it for me when he comes for the order.

With these thoughts came release that allowed the doll maker to gain his feet. He was calm again, though the doll was still heavy. “Fine, then,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “If I can’t lift you, I can’t bring you upstairs. You can wait here until I get rid of you, for all I care.”

When the third step up creaked under his weight, the clink of a nail against a pile of others petrified the doll maker’s legs.

“Once upon a time,” came the voice of the doll, muffled by distance and a closed door, “there lived a woman with a bright red cloak. It was a gift from an admirer, and she accepted it gratefully.”

“Be quiet,” the doll maker uttered, punching his leg to force feeling back into it.

“The woman was comely but the man was not, and so he knew he needed to find a more substantial way to charm her than the beauty of his face. The man wove her the cloak, and she came to love it more than anything.”

“But the cloak was so fine the woman became curious of her lover’s talent, and followed him one night when he left his loom. She saw him skinning animals alive, hands red with the same hue as adorned her shoulders, saw him studying them and piecing them together for the most wondrous of cloaks.

“The woman kept the secret of her lover and stayed with him for the fear of what he might do if she told someone. What if they did not believe her? She would be wholly at his mercy.

“Then, tragedy struck them. Wracked with grief and horrid suspicion, the woman asked her lover to make her another cloak, even finer than the first. He obliged. The new cloak resembled something precious so much it fooled the woman into thinking her husband had taken her treasure and ripped it apart to replicate it, even though it was his first innocent work in years, a testament to the heights his talent had reached.

“The woman could not bear the secret any longer, and that is why no one sings in the house on a hill anymore.”

Regaining control of his legs, the doll maker charged into his workshop. He threw open the door, bellowing with rage, and grabbed the hammer on the desk. The doll sat upright, eyes set forward, and the maker brought his hammer down. He swung in a frenzy and the hammer finally bit, sinking into the doll’s body, caving in its head, sending the eyes rolling along the table until they, too, were smashed. Nails spilled from its eviscerated belly. The doll maker bashed and swung and maimed, until nothing was left of the idol shaped after his son but pieces of painted wood and fabric and a tongue that had never had a right to speak.

He gathered the pieces in a sack and picked up the tongue. He expected it to writhe in his grip, but it was as lifeless as the manmade body it had been a part of. He burned the remains of the doll in a small pyre on the shore and cast the tongue into the lake. Ripples of schooling fish appeared where it sank.

When the pyre died out and the ripples vanished, the doll maker returned inside, fell into his bed, and wept.

5.

Once upon a time, there lived a doll maker who sought to excel in his craft.

He studied his art until he was considered a master, but even masters yearn to improve their skill.

What did artists do when they wanted to get better? Looked at the work of others, dissected them, deconstructed them.

The doll maker went further. He looked at those his own work imitated, dissected them, deconstructed them,

until he was peerless.

Everyone said his dolls were lifelike, but that was untrue; they were deathlike,

for the doll maker studied the fragility of life to mimic it in static form.

How many necks had his fingers crushed?

How many eyes had he plucked?

Not even the doll maker knew anymore.

All he cared about was his art,

and that is why the fish in the lake have grown fat.

6.

The doll maker snapped awake to the pounding of his heart.

The voice of the doll echoed in his thoughts, refusing to recede before waking as dreams were meant to. He pressed his face into his hands and gave a great shudder.

The doll maker rose to open the window. The breeze was too cold for comfort, but he braved it to suck in fresh air. He looked up to the moon for solace from the dark. Even as he did, it clouded over.

“Once upon a time,” came a voice, hoarse and thin, “there never-lived a doll.”

The doll maker spun with fright, but could not locate the sound in the gloom. He scrambled for the door to find it locked from the outside, and gave a startled cry when the window slammed shut.

“All it wanted was to tell stories, so that its maker would think of what he had done, and confess his sins.”

“YOU ARE NOT REAL!” the doll maker screamed. “YOU’RE A FIGMENT OF MY MADNESS!”

“But all he did was call the doll a liar and put nails through its tongue.”

Warmth coursed down his leg when the doll maker slumped against the door. The clouds dispersed, letting moonlight pour in.

The doll sat by the foot of his bed, grinning with a mouth full of nails.

“Until one day,” the doll croaked. Its arms were covered in blue, rotted flesh, face around the glass beads bloated, cheeks fish-nibbled open so he could see the contraption of nails within. “The doll was tired of having nails thrust through its tongue and decided to put one through its maker’s throat.”

Beside his ear, the doll maker heard a whisper: And that is why the doll maker never woke up.

They say the afterlife is a wheel and that is true, but I am between and so for me the way is a line. It unspools interminably into a horizon that shows the soft gold of dawn, always just a little out of reach.

Before the war this was only packed earth and grass and dirt to me; before the war I trod this path from home to capital thinking of the sweetness of rare fruits. Now that my back is to Ayutthaya the ground is sometimes baked salt where nothing grows and sometimes wet mud bubbling with the voices of the dead. Inside my arteries there is blood which throbs and pumps, and my belly growls at emptiness as might a bad-tempered dog. But it is difficult to be sure, after so much soldiering, that one is still alive. It is difficult to be certain this is not all a fever dream.

]]>Author : Benjanun Sriduangkaew Narrator : Jen Zink Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums “Fade to Gold” was first published in End of the Road, edited by Jonathan Oliver (Solaris Books, 2013).Author : Benjanun Sriduangkaew Narrator : Jen Zink Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums “Fade to Gold” was first published in End of the Road, edited by Jonathan Oliver (Solaris Books, 2013). by Benjanun Sriduangkaew They say the afterlife is a wheel and that is true, but I am […]Escape Artists, Inc.yes2965PseudoPod 552: The All or Nothing Dayshttp://pseudopod.org/2017/07/23/pseudopod-552-the-all-or-nothing-days/
Sun, 23 Jul 2017 14:39:53 +0000http://pseudopod.org/?p=2947http://pseudopod.org/2017/07/23/pseudopod-552-the-all-or-nothing-days/#respondhttp://pseudopod.org/2017/07/23/pseudopod-552-the-all-or-nothing-days/feed/0<p>Author : Gus Moreno Narrator : Maui Threv Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 552: The All or Nothing Days is a PseudoPod original. The All or Nothing Days By Gus Moreno Sometimes Ya-Ya would lie on the ground and look up at the sky, and in between […]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://pseudopod.org/2017/07/23/pseudopod-552-the-all-or-nothing-days/">PseudoPod 552: The All or Nothing Days</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://pseudopod.org">Pseudopod</a>.</p>

The All or Nothing Days

By Gus Moreno

Sometimes Ya-Ya would lie on the ground and look up at the sky, and in between sips from her mason jar she would point to clouds and call them out. That one looked like a shark, that one looked like a gun, that one looked like Donkey Kong. And I would always ruin it with my questions. What’s a shark? What’s a gun? What’s a Donkey Kong?

She would roll over and that meant she was over it. She grew impatient with me and with herself, with slipping and mentioning something that was before my time, and having to explain it to me, something that was so simple and obvious to her that she was reduced to stuttering because she couldn’t figure out how to explain what a computer was without me asking what plastic was, what an internet was. She’d rather talk about other stuff, like pyramids. She didn’t mind explaining to me their shape and precision, how no one knew how they were made. I imagined a mountain with flat sides, with the point of a knife at the top, when both of us laid in the red dirt after the sun fell and the stars covered the sky. She said pyramids generated their own energy. You could run a whole city off their magnetic power. They were beacons to lifeforms on other planets. They were built by a kind of human that was different than us. But the planet froze over and killed off this special strain, and the humans we descended from were the cowardly, spindly ones that knew how to hide and steal and survive.

Each time she finished a mason jar, she put it back in a cardboard box she kept next to the house. When the box was full of empty jars, she drove to get some more. No matter how tall I got, it was still too dangerous for me to go with her. She never said dangerous from what. All I knew was that a long time ago the world ate itself. We were all that was left. Us and the animals. She made trips to the nearest deserted town for supplies, and I sat in the doorway of our home, waiting for her rusted Bronco to pop up on the horizon. My job was to empty the trunk so she could crawl into bed and collapse on top of the covers. Or she would drink a whole mason jar and fall asleep wherever she was. That was another job of mine, to drag her into the shade, ever since she passed out in the sun and her face cracked and blistered. I could probably carry her inside now, if we were back in the canyon, maybe not like a man carrying his wife through the threshold, but at least hook my arms under her pits and lift, instead of pulling her in, feet first, and listening to her head bounce off the steps.

Ya-Ya spent most of her time sleeping.

After she ate, she slept. After a cigarette, she slept. After hunts, she slept. She took a big bowl of beans once she got up. She would make a big pot of it that would last for days, and when she started moaning awake I would pull out the floorboards and reach for the clay pot in the hole we dug to keep it cool. Anything you didn’t eat within a day in the canyon would spoil or harden if you didn’t it hide it where the sun couldn’t get to it. It was mostly ever beans and rice, sometimes tuna if Ya-Ya found tins on her trips. Sometimes she would go out at night and kill a boar. By morning she would have it shaved and buried a good distance from our home. She would bury it except for the portion of the boar she wanted me to cut out to make for dinner, and I would stagger out of bed with the knife and a hand over my erection because she would flick it if she saw it, and I would flay the skin first before cutting out the meat. It was a special occasion to have meat in our meals. We ate as much of the boar as we could before the sun got to it beneath the layer of dirt, or before a coyote or bobcat dug it out and dragged it away, nothing but lines in the sand and a small formation of bones farther out still. Wherever the boar was dragged, I was no longer allowed to go near it. I only had to ask why once for her to scrape her nails across my face. Questions bothered her. Especially the same question asked again. This was why I never asked about what happened to the world, why we lived in the deserted canyon instead of moving, why we never saw anyone else besides Frank.

I found him swimming in the watering hole behind our home. Ya-Ya said a long time ago settlers had dug a trench and filled it with water so cattle could drink as they grazed. She noticed me already cowering.

“Cows,” she clarified.

“Then why say cattle?” She swiped at my face and I ducked under her arm, a little surprised at my own reflex, though I didn’t see her knee cocked back until it landed between my legs. She said rain and erosion had deepened the trench until a lip of earth climbed into the sky and shaded the stagnant pool. The animals that drank from the hole had died a long time ago. The men who dug the hole were dead too. The salt in the water, mixed with soil, would dry my skin and leave white streaks across my face, but I didn’t care. It was the only fun to have out there.

Around that time a heat wave was rolling through the canyon, and after a week of no rain and cracks splintering the ground, the water level in the hole dropped and revealed the top of a person’s head. I put my clothes back on and ran back to Ya-Ya. She kicked an empty mason jar aside and followed me. We both stood on the edge of the slope, looking down at the water and the crown of wet black hair floating on the surface. She rubbed her chin for a while and finally said that was Frank. When I asked who Frank was, she raked her nails across my face. The watering hole was off limits now. It belonged to Frank.

Sometimes she passed out in a way that I could pull out her pack of cigarettes, steal one, and slide the pack back in without her waking. I would light it and sit on the slope, looking down at Frank, who never got out of the water. Who could hold his breath longer than I ever could. Unless he was walking around at night when I was sleeping. He became more than a man in my imagination. I imagined that below the surface of the inky water, there were gills opening and closing behind his ears. I imagined Frank’s mouth too big for his face, spherical and ribbed. I pictured Frank looking up at me through the ink, thinking I couldn’t see him. He morphed into another chore. Cut the meat. Hide the beans. Drag Ya-Ya out of the sun. Empty the trunk. Watch Frank.

When the cars appeared, I almost didn’t know what I was looking at. There were four black boxes on the horizon, same as Ya-Ya on her way back from scouring for supplies, except Ya-Ya was sprawled inside the house, and I was chopping down a rocking chair she had crammed into the Bronco for firewood. It was dusk and the sky was orange. Their cars appeared on the thin black line and descended down the sand slopes that created long tails of clouds, dipping out of sight and then reappearing on the crest of another dune. The axe fell out of my hand. Ya-Ya picked it up and told me to run inside and hide.

The cars peeled to a stop, forming a half circle around Ya-Ya. She dropped the axe and put her hands in the air. The doors swung open and men sprung out with black objects in their hands pointed at her. They were all screaming and the collective noise sounded like the coyotes at night when they killed their prey on our porch. I pulled a small corner of the curtains back to watch. One of them swung Ya-Ya’s arms behind her back and cuffed her. The back of his jacket had the symbols F, B, and I. He untied the twine that kept her hair in a knot, letting the long gray strands fall all the way down her back.

If I bothered her in some way, or did something that annoyed her, she always threatened to call the police. It looked like she finally made good on that promise. Not ever seeing the police before, I pictured them as towering creatures in blue uniforms–she always talked about their uniforms–with coyote or bobcat faces, who lived inside the mountains on the horizon, listening in silence to rainwater drip until someone called about a bad boy who was misbehaving.

Ya-Ya turned to the window and screamed, “Run!”

I ran out and circled around the house, police and the FBI chasing after me. I ran towards the red ball of the dying sun, and the agents ran with their flashlights fixed on my shoulders, stretching my shadow for miles ahead of me. I ran to the watering hole and jumped in, holding my breath for as long as I could to make them think I was gone. When I finally came back up for air, they were waiting, pointing their guns down at me and yelling, “Put your hands up!” When I raised my arms and tiptoed out, their guns still pointed at the water. They wanted Frank to come out too. The ongoing drought had dropped the water even lower, so besides the crown of Frank’s head, you saw the protruding ridge of his brow, his eyebrows gone, that curved inward to eye sockets you still couldn’t see under the water. A breeze swept through the canyon and I began to shake. An agent pushed Ya-Ya towards the edge of the slope to make her see. He pushed down on her cuffs and she fell to her knees. He kept screaming, over and over, “Who is he?” And looking at me as the cop yanked on her cuffs and she gritted her teeth, the canyon echoed her voice, “He is Little Horn. He is Son of Perdition. He is returned. Hail Satan!”

My first car ride ever was my last time in Conquered Canyon. They drove me to a hospital where I waited in a room with a wool blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Wavy salt lines covered my arms and chest. They would say later, the actual police who accompanied the F, B, and I men, when they would come to the foster homes and check in on me, that I had looked like one of the stray dogs they sometimes picked up on the highways, so tense and bug-eyed from living so close to the edge that they didn’t know whether I’d bite or piss as soon as they touched me. Then with the other fosters looking through curtains, they’d ask if I was hungry, or if I needed clothes, or if anyone was messing with me. Telling on the others would only get me into more trouble. The cops would leave but I would still have to go back inside and sleep in a bunk with older boys who were familiar with the concept of penetration, in all the ways you could think. The best thing the cops could ever do would be to leave me alone, which they never did.

In the exam room I met a doctor followed closely by a social worker. The social worker asked for my name, and I said, What’s a name? What’s a birthday? What’s a dad?

The doctor put things in my ears and put things in my mouth. The FBI agents came in next with a dark haired man in a long trench coat. He sat on a stool so I could look down on him. He handed me a lollipop and then pulled it out of my mouth when I didn’t take the wrapper off. He asked how long I’d known Ya-Ya. All my life. He asked if anyone else ever visited us out in the desert. Just Frank. He asked who Frank was. I didn’t know. He asked, after looking back at the social worker and the social worker giving him the go-ahead, if I had ever seen Ya-Ya digging, or burying anything around our home. He meant the boars. What boars? I told him about Ya-Ya’s night hunts, how it was my job to cut out the portions she prepared so we could cook them with our meals. The social worker started reaching for the walls to keep herself from falling. The doctor gasped but then heard the clawing noises behind her and went to catch the social worker. The detective was covering his mouth with his hand.

I’d been cutting out human flesh and dropping it in the clay pot, watching it boil and watching the rendered fat bubble and skin the surface.

My first time watching a television was my last time seeing Ya-Ya, as she was being led into a building where cameras flashed in front of her face. The bottom part of the screen read: SERIAL KILLER APPREHENDED.

She used to frequent rest stops along the highway and pick up men who had lost their nerve for gay sex in the restroom, maybe seeing her as a chance to prove their straightness. Because of my age, the news never mentioned my name. The doctor swabbed my mouth to test my DNA against Ya-Ya’s. Other detectives were scouring through old missing child reports and comparing them to Ya-Ya’s known movements.

There were foster kids who felt the need to beat on me once they found out who I was, and there were foster kids who would offer me drugs or sex to make sure I didn’t hurt them. It didn’t matter where they moved me, somehow the kids found out. They could lead me down a line of questions a normal person could answer about themselves, but I would come up empty because my backstory was blank.

The last home, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, they gave me a room upstairs, and while LeTroy was in the shower I would climb into his top bunk and look out the window, and look at Conquered Canyon in the east. Sometimes that was how the other kids found out, by me calling it Conquered Canyon instead of Concord Canyon, and them knowing that’s how Lady Luck called the canyon in the news sites. Everyone knew the details, knew what the cops found, knew she was found with a kid. So they would have me saying Conquered Canyon to start with, and then they would notice how I held a spoon, and how I sometimes played with the light switches, how everyone sat in front of the television and I sat and watched the microwave, how I pretended to be asleep no matter how much the Jacksons pulled on me to get to bed, until they gave up and let me sleep on the floor. It didn’t take long for the boys to corner me somewhere in the house, when the Jacksons were upstairs or in the basement, one of the girls conveniently turning her radio really really loud. Maybe because their whole life adults were always trying to squeeze details out of them, these boys never had the patience for questioning. They would just come out with it. You that kid? Ayo is that you? And then they’d ask if I thought I could take them. Was I really about that life? Man I wish you would try some shit like that on me. I cut your dick off.

What ended up getting me booted from the Jackson home wasn’t the other boys, but me. One morning the couple woke up to the sound of digging, and pulled their curtains back to find a crater in the middle of their backyard. A pyramid of dirt towered next to the hole. The head of a shovel peeking out and flinging deep brown earth against the pyramid.

The social worker called my police dads. They arrived at the house and crawled into the cave. I’d taken a milk crate and playing cards into the cave with me at that point. They were laying on their stomachs, unconcerned with getting mud on their uniforms. From the cave entrance, they assured me this was just a phase. They had been to Iraq and Afghanistan and said they knew men after the war who were like this, who dug holes, who could only sleep sitting upright and against something, who sat in their bedrooms holding a lighter, gliding their palm over the flame, doing these things, these rituals, as a way of transitioning back into the everyday world. All I needed was time, they said.

Before that familiar white van could pull up in the morning and take me to another home, I ran away. I waited for Letroy and Miguel to sneak into Mary’s room like they always did, and I climbed out the window, landing softly on the dirt pyramid. There was a train crossing near our house, and I walked along the tracks until one of the freighters slowed enough that I could grab a rung.

I measured time by how long it took for late night shows to stop making fun of Ya-Ya. How long it took her photos to fade from the front stories on websites. Until Lady Luck was the setup to a punchline no one could remember.

Scrap yards do not ask for ID when you bring them materials. They don’t require a mailing address, social security number. When they became familiar enough with me and noticed the lack of tracks on my forearms, they offered me a job working the yard. Whether those DNA swabs came back positive or not, only the Jacksons know. The state executed Ya-Ya and it snowed. The gauntness in my cheeks, a product of desert winds and the salt in the watering hole, made my face look older than I was. I sat in a bar and watched on television as people danced outside Ya-Ya’s prison when the state executed her.

Ya-Ya used to mention a dog named Guber, and sometimes she saw him in the clouds rolling over us, halfway through another jar. The local free paper did a piece on a shelter filling up with dogs no one wanted. They had been pets to owners who died suddenly in the house, and by the time officers came around to do a courtesy check, the dogs had eaten portions of their owner’s face, or nibbled a couple digits off their hands. These dogs were rehabilitated and ready for new homes, but people were still too afraid. They’d held fundraisers and promotions with radio stations, but no one ever adopted one of these dogs. The shelter attendants were only too eager to help me through the application process. They Xeroxed the work ID and a US resident card I’d found in a van in the junkyard. A kennel assistant led me down rows of metal cages filled with dogs wagging their tails and pacing nervously at my arrival. I stopped and crouched down to pet a small white poodle through the stainless steel bars. His name was Luke, and his beady eyes looked like pieces of coal buried under bunches of white wool.

I don’t have any friends. I don’t know how to read. Luke sleeps with me on a mattress at night, and I listen to the city scream. You can’t see the stars here. Sometimes I forget to pay my bills.

On our morning walk Luke and me watched a truck T-bone a minivan in a high traffic intersection. The minivan wrapped itself around a light post while the truck flipped on its side and jumped the curb, striking a few pedestrians. Luke flinched at the impact and tried to run away, but the leash snapped his collar and within a few seconds he calmed down. So many bits of glass lay strewn on the asphalt. There were people wailing and propping themselves up, men frantically screaming for someone to call an ambulance. Pools of blood were beginning to spill beneath car doors, and not more than a leap away from us, laid what looked like a child’s hand, snapped clean from the wrist. Luke spotted it lying in the street too, and I could feel his demeanor change, a tension building in the leash. He stepped in place nervously and began to whine, looking up at me and looking back at the hand. I know, boy. I could feel it too. I could feel the pull. Our rehabilitation being tested. We were supposed to be good. There was paperwork that said so. I could feel the enzymes in my mouth. The copper scent was in the air, and Luke was crying, and Ya-Ya’s voice was echoing in the canyon. Hail Satan. To what end?

]]>Author : Gus Moreno Narrator : Maui Threv Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 552: The All or Nothing Days is a PseudoPod original. The All or Nothing Days By Gus Moreno Sometimes Ya-Ya would lie on the gro...Author : Gus Moreno Narrator : Maui Threv Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 552: The All or Nothing Days is a PseudoPod original. The All or Nothing Days By Gus Moreno Sometimes Ya-Ya would lie on the ground and look up at the sky, and in between […]Escape Artists, Inc.yes2947PseudoPod 551: Alisonhttp://pseudopod.org/2017/07/16/pseudopod-551-alison/
Sun, 16 Jul 2017 22:24:40 +0000http://pseudopod.org/?p=2941http://pseudopod.org/2017/07/16/pseudopod-551-alison/#respondhttp://pseudopod.org/2017/07/16/pseudopod-551-alison/feed/0<p>Author : Seras Nikita Narrator : Dagny Paul Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 551: Alison is a PseudoPod original. Alison by Seras Nikita Alison will live her whole life in Folkston Georgia, forty miles from Waycross and as close to the Okefenokee as you can get before […]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://pseudopod.org/2017/07/16/pseudopod-551-alison/">PseudoPod 551: Alison</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://pseudopod.org">Pseudopod</a>.</p>

Alison

Alison will live her whole life in Folkston Georgia, forty miles from Waycross and as close to the Okefenokee as you can get before the ground starts filling your footprints with scab-colored water. She will wake each morning to the thickness of the swamp sucked up into the air around her. She will eat dinners of fried fish, and balls of corn fried with onions. Twice she will be hospitalized with blinding migraine headaches that are actually overdoses of aerosol insect repellent, ferried to her bloodstream via a bad habit of biting her nails and chewing the torn skin beneath them.

Alison Crenshaw will live to be nineteen years old. She will die without losing her virginity, or understanding that she is schizophrenic. Up until the very end, Alison will never consider that anyone else’s mind might not be exactly like hers.

Alison’s first ‘episode’, as her mother came to call them, occurred in late March, when the pines of Folkston were heavy with white, football-sized cocoons of brown moth larvae. Alison had been five years old, breaking apart acorns on the screened-in porch of her babysitter’s house when she smelled a smell that reminded her of the white collar her mother’s cat wore to keep fleas away. Then she looked to the sky and saw that the caterpillars were finally alive in there, squirming in and out of view, obscured by the gauzy white stuff they’d spun. Looking at those caterpillars Alison suddenly felt something in her chest -something bright and hot stirring around. She stood, disoriented, and something bolted through her, knocking her to her knees, a feeling of rage like nothing she had ever felt. A feeling of disgust, and terrible urgency, that made her feel like a balloon had grown in her throat and the only way to make it stop stretching her was to scream out and make it pop. Then she felt something else, some heavy and alien emotion that most people would describe as homesickness. For the first time she was feeling things in her chest instead of just thinking them in her head, and she hated the feeling. The thought that the cocoon was like her, that this feeling that had suddenly come over her was only one of hundreds more, teeming and squirming beneath her surface, and the cocoon was only a thick husk- person she had grown around herself. And then, plain as her mother’s voice, Alison heard something tell her, “Let them out.”

And she had crawled up into the tree, breathing hard through her mouth like a dog, and tore down three of the cocoons and broke them open and sat on the porch with them, pulling out the unborn, still-soft caterpillars and crushing them one by one between her small thumb and forefinger, making little brown and yellow piles with their corpses, and when she was finished she took them inside and put them on the floor in the kitchen before lapsing into such a fit of screaming that her body began to seize and the babysitter had rushed her to the hospital where she’d been sedated with benzodiazepines. Ann Crenshaw, skeptical of the bland diagnosis that her daughter had suffered an anxiety attack, fleetingly wondered if her Alison might be possessed, but the next day the girl was back to her old self and seemed to have un-remembered anything disturbing about her behavior the previous day.

Alison was a fast learner. As young as kindergarten, she came to realize that adults seemed repulsed by her. Alison found herself denied things that other children received – juice boxes and pillow cots and extra minutes of bathroom time. Eyes narrowed when they fell upon her; hands and bosoms were used for stern purposes rather than comforting ones.

“An unwavering child disturbs grown people.” This was Alison’s first lesson in adaptation. It was her first lesson in hiding the broken cogs inside her.

She began to observe carefully the reactions of other children around her. She learned that a loud voice and a pointed finger meant she should sob. Drawn syllables in voices that spiked high at the end meant she should clap delightedly. When three or more classmates tittered their voices in laughter, so did she. In some sense, Alison has spent every waking moment since developing and revising this mimicry. In her most private thoughts, she believes that her intelligence enables her to function without a soul.

Today is Wednesday.

Alison is propped on a stack of hospital pillows with one leg fastened into a steel and Velcro matrix of cruel-looking traction apparatus. The splinters of bone formerly protruding through the flesh of her calf have been prodded back into place and fixed with screws and plates. Rods are attached to the screws, and the other ends of the rods fit through the bolts of a rigid hammock suspended over her hospital bed. Around the rods, her flesh is punched into seams with hard, tight staples. When the swelling goes down and the stitches heal, the doctors will apply a soft cast that they’ll replace every twenty days or after each surgery, whichever comes first. But right now Alison’s right leg is as bad as it will ever be; shaped like knobs of Chinese ginger and covered in big green bruises full of clotted blood. In the next bed over, John is being prepped for transfer to the burn ward.

She knows its John because she can see one of his eyebrows through a break in the carapace of stained bandages enveloping his body. Flanking the eyebrow are twin divots where the EMTs have removed the piece of jewelry, shaped like a bent barbell, that he usually wears there.

If not for this, the body in the bed might be anyone. It might be any twenty-two year old young man with second-degree deep partial thickness burns covering 45 percent of his body and a morphine drip keeping him just stoned enough to quit screaming about it.

Today is Wednesday.

Alison’s childhood passed with only one more ‘episode’, a terrible day in her eleventh year that began as a wonderful day at the water park.

In her yellow swimsuit, Alison was waiting in line for the bathroom when she saw a woman pass by her holding a little boy by the hand. The woman was wearing a floppy hat, and using the hand that wasn’t occupied by the boy to eat an ice-cream bar, the kind with the waxy chocolate on the outside. And she was crying. Sobbing, really. Sobbing and pulling on the boy and still eating the ice-cream, which was falling apart in the midday heat and dripping a trail of white stuff and waxy brown shards behind her.

Alison looked at the woman, bewildered. At the way the woman’s mouth twisted as she tried to cry and eat, unable to stop doing either, and the broken cogs in Alison’s head mashed their cracked teeth together, trying to turn. Feelings boiled up in Alison for the second time in her life, alien and crooked, a furious feeling like she was being tricked. And there again was the phantom smell, sweet and wicked. She had pulled off her bathing suit right there in the line and attacked the woman, knocking her to the ground and forcing broken pieces of the wooden ice-cream stick over her lips and down her throat while the boy looked on, screaming in a shrill child’s voice. Then desperation overtook her, an urgent need to be somewhere still and quiet and un-peopled. She ran until she could crawl, and wedged her small naked body between the toilet and wall of a bathroom stall like an animal seeking the tight comfort of its burrow, where she fought herself bloody to avoid being touched and tried to exorcise the deluge of feelings with screaming sobs so intense they bordered on hysteria.

This time Alison’s mother Ann did not take her daughter to the hospital. She told nobody about the episode who had not already witnessed her daughter dragged naked and bloody from the water park men’s room. As for the woman with the ice cream, the splintered wood tore two holes the size of raisins in her esophagus but she declined to press charges after Alison carefully printed some paragraphs of apology into a greeting card shaped like a flower flanking a pair of sleeping kittens. Having come out of her bad moment, Alison hung her head and bit her lip because she knew those were the fitting motions for shame. But inside, she felt nothing.

The final episode, the last of her life, began around 8:30 on a Monday night.. Alison was alone in her room when she saw a flash of lime-colored light at the periphery of her vision and then smelled something floral. She sniffed around the room and checked all the electrical sockets, which seemed fine, and by the time she finished doing that the smell had gone.

On Tuesday night John and Alison went to the theater together, an event Alison logged as their third official date. After the movie John convinced her to stop off at a restaurant bar at the urging of John’s idiot roommate Cleveland Harold whom everyone called Cleaver, and who immediately set to work goading John into matching him with neat shots of Jameson whiskey.

The first several shots of liquor soothed the boys’ anxieties about the ramifications of taking more shots, and before long they were clumsy and wild. A discussion about a mutually despised ex-girlfriend of Cleaver’s somehow became a lusty celebration of Mexican food, but not the Mexican food you get here, that’s just shit, but REAL Mexican food like they ate that night in Tijuana at the place with the chickens and the fence. Alison waved away a third cocktail. She observed how the bartender’s eyebrows behaved and passed judgment on people based on their posture. Alison watched a cluster of women exclaim over some photo on a cell phone, noticing that the more attractive the woman, the more at-ease her arms seemed to be. Alison relaxed her shoulders.

Presently Cleaver went outside to smoke, and when he did John pushed his face close to Alison’s and lapsed into a glassy-eyed insist-a-thon, telling her she looked beautiful tonight, cooing over her hair and hands and, in a burst of devil-may-care optimism, her breasts. She considered the pros and cons of sleeping with him and decided against. She pushed him away and he was too drunk to be offended; she told him to keep his hands to himself, and he laughed. He poked a cigarette between his lips and tried to light it from the wrong end, and Alison didn’t help him because she had ceased to feel any responsibility over his feelings.

Alison, soberest by far, was ferrying the three of them home in John’s blue 1993 Tacoma when the smell came to her again, a thousand times more strongly, and for the first time she was able to associate it with something she’d smelled before. A high, blunt stench like plumbing fluid and gardenia that brought back memories of a sweet-smelling poison her father would pipe through the sprinkler-hose to rid their front lawn of mole crickets and fire ants; black plastic boxes of poison plugged into the necks of sprinkler heads like latched ticks.

Alison turned to John, half-lidded, propped between herself and Cleaver.

“Smell that? Hey.” She elbowed him in the lap. “Hey. Smell that?”

“Dinn smell nnythun,” replied John thickly, head bobbling on his neck in agreement with the bouncing of the pickup. Cleaver had got the window seat so he could ash his Marlboro Mild into the rushing night air. This afforded John the middle seat and more chances to insinuate his hand into the crease between Alison’s thighs.

“Mmmm.” John smiled, eyes fixed on some imaginary drama playing out in soft focus a few inches from his nose. “Mmmm.”

“Stop.”

“Whuss goan make me, hmmm?”

The sloppy opera of his fingers reached an apex as he thrust his thick fingers into the groove of her jeans, forcefully and without finesses, as one might wrench a bent spoon from a jammed garbage disposal. His other hand slipped between her Wranglers and the small of her back, past the seam of her panties, until she could feel his dry unwelcomeness finding entry into her anus.

Cleaver heaved in the window seat and dropped his cigarette onto the floormat, where it sizzled briefly before being extinguished by vomit.

“Mmm, you goan say youaint that KINDA girl? Well yuh’re goan be tonight. I’mma make a silverdollar outta a dime with yuh’re assshole tonight.”

“STOP IT.” Alison grabbed John’s hand, but before she could throw it back at him the metallic-poison smell intensified suddenly, filling the small space of the truck’s cab, overwhelming her. If the smell in her dorm room had been a whiff of mole-cricket poison dissolved in sprinkler-water, this was the feeling of drowning in the stuff, of being scalded to death in a poison-flooded burrow. Alison’s eyes bulged and she sucked in air. She hacked with all the force of her lungs and let go of the wheel, just for the smallest of seconds, as she pushed all the air out of her in a violent, choking wheeze.

And then a child with no eyes stepped directly into the wash of her headlights. Light flooded into empty sockets, apricot-sized cavities grown over with flesh, perfectly smooth, as if eyes had ever meant to be there at all.

Behind the wheel of the Tacoma, time slowed down. Alison felt her palms close around the emergency brake. The child’s face whipped in the direction of impact.

The eyeless child shrieked and the sound pieced the night, pricking through Alison’s scalp like a blackberry bramble, the insane death cry of the eyeless child with crumbling teeth who had arrived to rearrange the furniture in her brain. Her face purpled with the force of her coughing, her heart thumped in her throat.

For the barest instant before impact, Alison saw that the thing no longer looked like a child, but like an old, old thing. A thing with knotty sockets of stretched skin that locked onto Alison and saw inside her and filled her chest with a swollen ache that felt like terrible homesickness, or the feeling of sudden descent when a roller coaster drops from its highest peak.

Then the thing was a child again. An awful, awful sound rose from it, a gibbering shriek that went up and up until it split the air like a mordant trainwhistle. It was the scream of a banshee, and Alison thought,

This thing is an evil thing, and it knows my name.

The sound of impact was a fleshy clunk, an Easter ham dropped in the sink to defrost. Alison screamed. Her eyes rolled in her head and she swerved into a ditch, where the truck flipped twice before crunching into a thick-trunked oak tree. Boughs of moss dangled like ripped snakeskins in the smoke above the wreckage.

Cleaver made an ‘UHHN!” sound as his skull was crushed between the half-down window and an L-shaped piece of automobile jutting improbably from the passenger’s side doorjamb. John’s head flapped into the dashboard as if his neck were made of strung taffy, and Alison could not tell if blood or urine was coming out of him but one or the other was puddling warmly around her armpit and collarbone, mashed as she was into the roof of the cab, which was now the floor of the cab. The keys rattled in the ignition. Leaves and tendrils of detritus swirled around the truck’s carcass as it lay crumpled at the foot of the tree, presenting its greasy black belly to the sky, and the tinkle of the shamrock-shaped jingle bell dangling from John’s rearview mirror slowed, slowed – stopped. Then everything was still. The wrecked truck had become part of the nighttime countryside, and so too the three soft, broken bodies inside it.

In Alison’s final memory of the crash, she opened her eyes and everything was quiet except for a gentle, metered dripping and the sound of soft swamp air rustling through the big tree above. She saw the world upside-down through the splintered frame of the driver’s side window. A tremendous weight compressed her diaphragm, and her face felt numb and sticky. She tried to lift her head but found it pinned by something; a strange warm thing that was both hard and soft. She put her hand up and groped, and her fingers identified the shape of an ear connected to a patch of sweaty, bloody buzzcut.

It was John’s head, pinning her head. John’s body, pinning her body. She wet her lips and tried to make words, but all that came out of her mouth was a throaty sputtering sound. A flash of lime-colored light, the smell of cricket poison. And then something moved near the corner of her eye. At the edge of her vision, something was creeping out from behind the window’s skewed frame. Something silvery and slow-moving. She blinked and it was closer, blinked again and it was inches from her face. A child’s head of hair. Soft cornsilk hair. Alison screamed.

Her mouth, when she opened it, filled with blood from her nose and made her choke. Still she could not stop from screaming as the eyeless child craned its head into the wreckage, leaning in from behind the truck’s twisted window frame like a grinning moon, and then unhinged itself to crawl into the wreckage of Alison’s mind, which had likewise become unhinged.

It knows my name.

Today is Wednesday.

Cleaver died on impact. Alison knows that now because the doctors have told her, except they’d called him Albert Cleveland Harold-Strunk and for a moment she didn’t know who they were talking about. She also knows that her airbag likely saved her life, even if her face is a swollen purplish mess and her upper lip feels as large as a split kielbasa. And she knows that she passed out before the truck caught fire. She knows these things now.

But even conscious, they tell her, she wouldn’t have been able to free herself because of how her right leg was bent up into the center console and jammed in place with a length of her own broken tibia. But even spared THAT, they continue, the nurses and doctors, she would still have been pinned beneath John’s limp weight, which fell draped across her body like a sweaty human duvet. Two-hundred-and-ten-pounds of him.

A two-hundred-and-ten-pound fire blanket.

As it turns out, the number of minutes necessary for gasoline combustion flames to consume a body the size of John’s is marginally greater than the number of minutes required for a stocky ex-marine named Dave and his brother-in-law Matthew to come upon the scene of a very bad car accident and pull the inhabitants to sanctuary.

Not enough time to consume the body, but more than enough time make it mauve-colored and weeping and covered with fluid-filled blisters the size of fried eggs. The fire melted the rubber of John’s his Nikes into the soles of his feet, sparing the fair-haired maiden beneath him.

Today is Wednesday.

This visit that the nurses are granting Alison is an excursion from Intensive Recovery Room 914, to which her relocation from the operating room is recent enough that she’s still stupid with anesthesia. The nurses keep reminding Alison that such a visit is VERY much against hospital rules, as if they’ve been weakened by her mewling and unending petitions.

From how the nurses are behaving, Alison understands that she is expected to thank John. She is expected to DEMAND to thank him, for shielding her from the flames and sparing her flesh by sacrifice of his poor, selfless body. She thinks maybe she is expected to weep over him, or to burst out with some display of gratitude or bewilderment or even explode into sudden internal wrath at the injustice of it all.

That the nurses are affording her this indulgence now, in the freshest aftermath of their shared hell, is a fact Alison takes to imply that John is extremely unlikely to survive. The thought does make her feel something in her chest, but it might be a broken rib.

Although Alison is 100% certain that John’s act of self-sacrifice was more a testament to his blood alcohol level than his belief in martyrdom, Alison’s logarithmic judgment tells her to play along. She calls up just enough tears to brighten her eyes. She whispers some nonsense words and reaches through the bedrail, but isn’t permitted to touch him because the risk of infection is terribly high when you’re missing most of your skin. Alison sits with him doing these things until John’s breath quickens beneath the bandages and he begins to whimper, at which point the nurses separate the two beds in order to calm John with another jolt of morphine. As a pair of candy stripers wheel Alison back to Intensive Recovery Room 914, a nurse follows behind, fiddling with the IV bag and encouraging her to consider the compound fracture of her right leg a lucky break. Alison manages a weak chuckle, but only in her mind.

In the burn ward, nobody appreciates a pun.

Today is Wednesday.

There is an article in the paper about the accident. A nurse brings Alison a copy and holds it up so she can see the headline through her crusty, slit-swollen eyes. There is a black-and-white picture of Cleaver. It’s a yearbook photo, five years younger, and his hair is shaped into crunchy comma-shaped spikes that have been bleached at the tips. The spot reads “STUDENTS IN DEADLY COLLISION”, and smaller letters underneath, “22-YEAR-OLD HERO SHIELDS GIRL FROM FLAMES; CONDITION REMAINS CRITICAL”. In a color photo Dave the stocky marine is standing next to the charbroiled Tacoma, its black-burnt remains crusty with leftover oxygen-eating foam. Dave is smiling, one boot planted on the burnt Tacoma. He looks like a hunter standing over his kill. He’s smiling and Alison can see wet spade-shaped teeth that make her think of cantaloupe seeds.

In Alison’s dreamscape, the measure of instants that make up ‘minutes’ and ‘hours’ has no foreseeable significance. For a long while, she has tethered herself to reality with a long, thin string. Now her mind is wandering. She dreams of the child, its moon-shaped face, and an eyeless horror that comes toward her out of the dark, smiling, plucking apart knots with long, thin fingers.

The eyeless thing never leaves her. Sometimes it sits on her lap, playing with her hair and sucking on the external fixation pins that jut from puffy openings in her calf. But most often, the thing has taken to tucking itself into a corner of the ceiling, like a blind house spider. It grins and whispers things as she swallows her antibiotics and scrapes up green spoonfuls of Cisco Gelatin Desert and lets the beeping of the various monitors lull her into blissful morphine dozes. The things says things that don’t make sense to Alison, but making sense of things isn’t on her priority list right now, and she doesn’t think about it much.

“They must understand that you’ve purchased this township, fair and square,” is one thing that it whispers. It also says things like, “Jemima used to love corn on the cob,” and, “To incapacitate a witch you must impale it by the cunt,” even though Alison has never known any witches or anyone named Jemima except the black lady with the bouffant on the squeezable bottle of pancake syrup.

Sometimes the eyeless thing sings soft, sweet songs about animals going to heaven. And sometimes it talks about John.

“When the burns dry up, he’ll come for you,” it whispers. The face of the thing still looks like a child but the body is bloated and scaly, and the arms and legs have begun to look like the legs of a spider or a wasp.

“He’ll crawl in here when you’re sleeping, and he’ll steal your skin. He’ll drag the rest of you to Hell with him.”

After the hero story runs in the paper, the nurses start reading Alison letters from well-wishers and congratulateurs that are arriving for John. There are Hallmark cards with sappy religious poems, often passed around offices and classrooms, signed with a chaos of different names and inks. Arts-and-crafts sympathies from Girl Scouts and relatives and second-grade Sunday-school classes.

Alison’s mother arrives at some point while Alison is dozing, and when she wakes up she’s there at the side of the bed. She presses her lips together a lot, and her eyes never stop being pink and glassy with tears. When she speaks she can’t keep her voice from cracking. She keeps wanting to hold Alison’s hand.

By the fifth day Alison does not want to hold anyone’s hand. She just wants to sleep. The doctors have removed her from the morphine drip and now sleep is the only release from the deep, rotten ache biting into her bones.

But she can’t sleep. Not really. She can only get as far as dozing, and then she gets stuck, in-between dreaming and waking. But there isn’t much pain in the in-between, so Alison doesn’t mind staying there. She learns the sound of her own heartbeat and likes the way the sheets ruffle the hairs on her arms. She listens to the cogs turning insider her. She fades into a painless place that only looks like her hospital room.

The eyeless thing sits on her pillow and picks at her hair and strokes her eyebrows, gently. It makes a singing sound in its throat like a wet nurse humming a baby to sleep.

Some days pass.

Alison feels well enough to watch television and eat one of the hamburgers her mother brings, but the meat tastes spongy and strange and she spits it out. She asks the right questions and smiles at the right times and at night she has terrible sweating nightmares in which she knows she needs to find her way to the burn ward, but her leg is bolted to the traction beam with screws bored into her bones.

Alison wakes from these dreams panicky and physiologically agitated, and it takes time for her to relax into sleep again. She is not alone. Her eyeless visitor watches from its hidey-hole in the corner of the ceiling, telling her things – things about centipedes and the A-Bomb and things about John. Eventually Alison notices that the thing doesn’t speak words any longer – only sounds. Laughing and squishing sounds. In the dimmest corner of Intensive Care Room 914, Alison can see the thing grinning and pulsing. She can see that it’s begun to spin a cocoon around itself.

It is her birthday. Nurses and her mother and several members of her mother’s church are gathered around her bed, but she cannot tell their faces apart and she cannot hear the singing because the noises from the thing cocooned in the corner have grown deafening. She sees a foil balloon with a honeybee, and a cake with blue icing, and on top of the cake there are candles whose tips are alight with the most beautiful, sensuous, godly fire. Alison looks into the fire and two things happen at once: She is gripped by the most powerful orgasm of her life, and the thing in the corner screams a single word so loudly that she will be effectively deafened forever. The word is BURN.

The nurses are reluctant to allow Alison another visit to John’s room, as his morning debridement has been a difficult one and the pain is overcoming him to the point where drugs merely bring the unholy pain ripping through his skinless nerves from a scream to a conversational tone. An “indoor voice”, as Alison’s aunts and teachers would say. But in the end they agree to wheel her briefly to John’s bedside, persuaded perhaps by her meaningless tears and perhaps by a sense of emotion, a thing that Alison is no longer capable of comprehending. The matches the nurses used to light her birthday candles are pushed into the rim of her cast, the strike-strip irritating the splotchy skin that has grown prickly with newborn hairs.

The child-thing sits at the foot of her hospital bed, smiling at her with its mouth full of teeth. Hundreds of teeth. Its bones, and its face, have gone.

The oxygen tank ignites immediately, showering John with sparks the color of fireflies in the moonlight, and then redder, richer flames as the bandages and ointments catch fire. Alison cannot hear screaming. She cannot hear the crack of bone as her leg breaks apart for the second time, as she drags herself into John’s bed and covers his raw body with her own. She smells cricken poison. She feels flames splash across her body, and at first they feel cold, icy cold like falling onto your palms while ice-skating.

She would like to die before the hurting begins. She asks the child beside her if it can help her with this, and the child says yes, and then a wash of darkness spreads before her eyes, edging out the light of the world like softly melting snow.

Alison has lived to be nineteen years old. Up until the very end, Alison never considers that anyone else’s mind might not be exactly like hers.

Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.

All at once he was no longer sure that the groaning had been the sound of flies. Even so, if the old lady had been watching him he might never have been able to step forward. But she couldn’t see him, and he had to know. Though he couldn’t help tiptoeing, he forced himself to go to the head of the bed.

He wasn’t sure if he could lift the blanket, until he looked in the can of meat. At least it seemed to explain the smell, for the can must have been opened months ago. Rather than think about that—indeed, to give himself no time to think—he snatched the blanket away from the head of the figure at once.

‘Good Boy’ was first published in Far Horizons e-magazine, in their January 2015 issue.

‘Reaching Out’ is a PseudoPod Original.

‘A Thing In All My Things’ was originally published in Urban Fantasy Magazine on August 25, 2015.

“When you let go, you are truly free.”

Good Boy

By Ruth E.J. Booth

I’d wanted a dog ever since I was little. So when I finally moved out, I was bound to end up with my own. This scratty wee scrag of soot. I say he’s mine, I think we sort of found each other. Well, they say the dog picks the owner. I say he found me when nobody else wanted me.

He doesn’t do tricks or owt. He’s more a companion, really. Likes being talked to, taken for walks, that sort of thing. He prefers the quiet parts of town – the old industrial estate, or that scrap of trees down by the railway tracks – though he’s well-behaved in crowds, a stilling presence in all that madness.

I take him out more these days. He’s putting on weight, y’see. Funny, I used to be able to fit him in my hand, now it’s hard to heft his paws off of us. I’m not sure about him being at work so much – my boss doesn’t like him, for starters – but it’s nice, knowing he’s there, just over my shoulder. My constant shadow. Frankly, it’s become difficult to get through the day without him.

So he deserves a treat. I’ve meant to take him up to the bridge for a while, but it’s been a question of timing. Even then, I almost baulk it and climb back over the guard rail. That drop makes me fair dizzy – but, bless ‘im, suddenly he’s there, and the sickness just vanishes. God knows how he fits on the ledge.

He sits right up close to me, this big wet fuzzy thing. I bury my face in his damp black coat, until I’m not scared anymore. Just sort of warm, and numb. I lift my head, and all I can see is that same furred darkness. I pull myself up, stand on the edge and give his head one last scratch.

Good boy, I say. Good boy.

Reaching Out

by Richard Farren Barber

I tried to ignore the woman because that’s what you do in a cemetery; you don’t intrude on someone else’s grief. But she was only a few rows behind me and I couldn’t concentrate on what I was saying to Gemma so I turned around.

I couldn’t see her at first. I looked over rows of pale gravestones and her voice rose between them as if the words came from the ground itself. There was movement and then I saw her. I hesitated – if there’s one thing you learn early on as a visitor to this place it is to keep your distance.

But I was concerned for her. It was impossible to remain human and not be a little worried. She wailed like an infant. I’ve heard people dying on a battlefield who were in less agony than she was.

I finished my conversation with Gemma – rushing through my update on the kids and her parents, the usual stuff – and stood up.

My feet crunched on the gravel path and I thought that the woman would hear my approach, but she was too wrapped up in her own pain. I got to within a few feet of her before she noticed me.

I hadn’t seen her in the cemetery before and I visit Gemma often enough to know most of the regulars. The woman was kneeling on the ground. Smudges of mud on her arms suggested that she had been lying on top of the grave. There was mud on her cheeks; mixed with tears that continued to stream down her face.

I hesitated. “Are you okay?” I still didn’t want to intrude. I thought she hadn’t heard me, or she’d heard me and decided to ignore me. And that would be okay, that would be fine – grief is a terrible thing, it can change you in ways you never expect and can’t understand. When Gemma went…

When Gemma went I hit a bad patch.

The woman turned to me.

“I can hear him.”

I looked at the headstone at the end of the grave. James Bowen.

“Your husband?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Lover.” She drew her hand through the grass on top of the grave in a way that made me shudder. It was as if she was caressing the body in the casket buried six foot below her.

“He’s gone,” I said.

She shook her head. Violently, so that the curled bangs of her hair swung back and forth. “No. He wouldn’t leave me.”

I sat down on the ground beside her. I made sure I was on the path, rather than James Bowen’s grave. Standing on plots gives me the creeps. When I see the cemetery’s gardeners taking short cuts across the grass I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from shouting at them.

“Can’t you hear him?” she asked. Her eyes were wide. Deep enough for a fool to fall into. I didn’t know her. I didn’t know James, and yet I understood what she was saying; how could he leave her? How could he ever leave? I’d asked Gemma the same question.

She kneeled forward on the grave once more. I put my hand on the grass beside her head and I thought I felt…movement.

“He’s waiting for me,” she said and started to pull away chunks of grass with her hands, gouging out black grooves in the earth. She stopped and put her cheek against the ground.

This time I heard it. A voice. Muffled. Almost hoarse from screaming.

“He’s still there,” she said.

I put my head to the ground and felt the thrum of noise rising to the surface. The scream of his pain.

And I ran back to Gemma, and started to dig.

A Thing in All My Things

By Samuel Marzioli

There’s a thing in my closet, crouched in the dark, black lines accentuating every crease and fold of its shriveled face. A cherry-red eye peeks at me. The slash of a frown hints at untold regrets even as its croaking voice spills into the silence.

You should have died in your sleep and saved me all the trouble, it says.

After taking a moment to compose myself, I slip out of bed and hurry past that raw, corrupted space with my eyes averted. In the gloom of the living room, I open the blinds and let the day pour through the slats in glowing strips of light. Breakfast consists of three bowls of cereal and a handful of pills meant–among other things–to squash the thing for good. I unfold the newspaper and try to cloud my brain with random bits of trivia. Stuff the gaps with distractions so that, for one slivered moment, I might forget what’s waiting in the other room.

Not that it does a lick of good. For three years it’s haunted my life and there’s no rhyme or reason for when or where it will manifest next. A week ago, it appeared hunkered beside me on the porcelain ledge of the bathtub, its eyes staring curses–but only visible through the chrome reflection of the overflow plate. A month ago, it hid beneath my pillow, its fingers worming out from the edges like heavy tongues lapping at the air. Before then, it was behind a hallway air vent, scratching and sobbing inside the living room walls, and on and on, through more days and places than I care to remember.

I head to the bathroom and dawdle through my morning routine: brush my teeth, wash my face, scrub my skin in the shower so it shines the pink of old, healed bruises. But after toweling off, there’s no more time to waste. My feet drag across the carpet like dead weights, room to room, until the bedroom closet looms before me.

A chill digs through my skin as I reach into the infected recess of the closet. The thing flattens against the wall, like it’s pretending to be a shadow or a patch of mold. As if it thinks I can’t hear the sound of its spectral lungs pulling in the thought of air. Though I know it will not scratch or bite, it takes some time for me to steady my nerves, assemble my clothes and prepare for work.

There’s a thing in the espresso maker of my barista station. It fiddles with the inner workings, making the shots burn too hot or steep too thin. Its scalded fingers wiggle from the spouts, deep red filling the gossamer cracks in its broken, bloated skin.

We’re slammed at exactly 6 AM. The line of vehicles stretches across the parking lot, like the boxcars of two stalled freight trains. My co-workers scurry around–with a manic intensity that makes the Café Stop’s interior feel small as a crypt–and all of them barking orders.

On my best days, I can knock out eighty drinks an hour. But my best days never come when the thing’s around. Its blood sprinkles into the milk pitchers, and I have to dump them out in the sink to start again. Its spit dribbles down the espresso spouts, forcing me to remove the portafilters and wash them. It even reaches out from the water reservoir and whacks at finished drinks, upsetting their lids and spilling the contents across the counter.

My boss yells at me for the mess. “Damn it, Tom! If you can’t get your shit together, maybe you should find another place to hang your apron, mister!” Like a parent scolding an unruly child. As if I wasn’t twice his size and hadn’t trained him the day he stepped through those doors.

I almost say as much, until the thing knocks against the espresso machine’s plastic interior. Its whispered taunts, hidden behind the screech of steaming milk, lift stark as any shouted voice: Can’t you do anything right? You’re useless. A waste of air.

It drains the fight from me. I nod, apologize and promise, “It won’t happen again.”

There’s a thing in my cigarette lighter. It wets the wire so it can’t spark and clogs the jet valve so the butane won’t release. Sometimes it sticks its head into the torch stream, infusing my cigarettes with the scent and taste of rotting flesh and burning hair.

My co-worker, Cara, slips out the Café Stop entrance and heads for the dumpster cage where we’re forced to spend our smoke breaks. She stands aloof, snatches the cigarette from behind her ear and lights it up. She avoids making eye contact with me, same as everyone on any given day. Because I’m intense, they say, and they sometimes catch me talking to the thing even though only I can see and hear it.

“Hi,” I say, to lighten the mood. Because Cara’s one of the good ones–beautiful inside and out–no matter how shy or scared of me she is.

“Hey, Tom.” She pauses to take a drag. “Mike’s a real asshole for yelling at you like that.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Don’t let it get to you. He knows you’re a good worker and it’s not like he doesn’t have his off days too.”

“Maybe.”

“Any plans for after work?” she says, examining her shoes like mushrooms just sprouted from the leather.

Now is the perfect time. I take a breath to calm the vicious beating of my heart, assembling the words I’ve rehearsed since the day she and I first met. “Actually, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to–”

But the world around me comes alive, spewing the thing’s vocalized disdain. Lardo, from the gray smoke leaking from Cara’s mouth.

“No.”

“No what, Tom?”

Fatty plumpkin, from the burrows insects punched into the dumpster’s rotting food.

She runs for the café’s entrance before I can explain, and I’m left alone. Same as always.

It proves too much. Though I’ve managed to push the rage aside till now, the pressure builds, causing my inner parts to tear from all the strain. The thing can’t hurt me, I tell myself. But I know I’m wrong because it always does and nothing–not therapists, doctors, or even pills–can fix it or make it any better.

No more. Today’s the day it ends. After three years, the time has come to put the thing to rest. I flick my cigarette away and head inside, to finish my shift and make my plans for later.

When work is through, I fill a cup of espresso dregs and take it with me. Down on Main Street, I stop by the florist and buy a red rose and then drive along the route called Old Sutter Road. Before stepping out of my car onto the sun-baked cemetery parking lot, I ask myself what the point is. But I know the answer all too well: because there’s a thing haunting my life and it will never, ever go away until I finally confront it.

The quarter mile walk to the plot is a winding, deserted path of silent grass and still trees, all hedged in by a gaudy chain-link fence. Heat bears down like a crack to hell has opened up above me. I find the proper row, skip a few graves over and I’m there.

There’s a thing in my mother’s coffin. It scratches at the inside of the lid, shouting curses reduced to babble by the six feet of dirt above it. Nevertheless, the emotions it expresses are clear, stuff I’ve heard so many times I know it all by rote. Utter disappointment. Hate. But mostly regret for the life and freedom ruined by my unexpected birth.

She killed herself three years ago. She should be dead and gone and yet she returns as the thing in all my things, a malignant voice manifesting the poison words she fed me all my life. But now I’ll say my own words, kept locked away because of fear, because of deep-seated self-contempt. Because it hurts too much to voice aloud, no matter how true they are.

“For thirty years, you were a terrible mother. A monster, a hateful, selfish thing. I never said it before because I loved you, but I can’t let you hurt me anymore. You’re dead and buried and that’s all you’re allowed to be.”

I lay the flower on her plot, a symbol of my enduring love. As for the rest of me, the greater part? I dump the cup of espresso dregs, as bitter and cold as was her constant disposition. It drips down her tombstone, trickling across the words, “Loving Mother, Died Too Soon,” etched into its face. Then I spit on the grass above the remains of what has always been her small, decaying heart.

There’s a thing in my head, inhabiting the darkest grooves and wrinkles of my brain. It tells me terrible, degrading lies–lies that poke and prod and tear and hurt–and sometimes I still believe them. But now, for the first time since my mother’s death, my memories are the only place it haunts.

“Lord Randy, My Son” was first printed in DANGEROUS VISIONS (1967) and appears here with the kind permission of the Hensley estate and the Virginia Kidd Agency. This is the second of Ellison’s Dangerous Visions to appear here on PseudoPod. Make sure to check out Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird by Sonya Dorman.

Lord Randy, My Son

He rebelled on the night the call came to leave the warm and liquid place; but in that way he was weak and nature was strong. Outside, the rains came; a storm so formidable that forecasters referred to it for all of the time that was left. He fought to remain with the mother thing, but the mother thing expelled him and in fear and rage he hurt the mother thing subtly. Black clouds hid the stars and the trees bent only to the wind.

Monsters Exist

by Ian McHugh

Monsters exist. Their numbers and nature vary from time to time and place to place, but they are always near.

More often than not, they are nearer than we like to think.

Monsters do not appear in the world fully formed. They are not angels, fallen from the sky. Monsters grow, here. They germinate, as if from a seed, and we water and nurture the seed ourselves.

II.

For him, it starts with hair.

The smell of his mother’s hair is all that he remembers of her. That is what he tells himself, anyway.

Monsters are supposed to have mummy issues. Heroes tend to have daddy issues. That is the truth, as told in stories.

Most monsters are socialised and reified by the monsters around them. He does not have that luxury. A fabricated memory of his dead mother is something to cling to, at least.

III.

How he got from sniffing hair to boiling down corpses and making wind chimes from their bones may be of interest to some.

It seems, at first blush, a large leap to make.

Large leaps can be comprised of many small steps. The steps are often accidental.

You take enough steps, not planning or even really thinking about where they might be taking you, and one day you look up and find that what started out as a fetish for sniffing hair has morphed into dismembering bodies with an axe and rendering them down in the boiler out back of your house.

It started with sniffing hair, and hair is still the crux of it.

He has a routine.

IV.

It begins when the baggage carts are parked out of view of the passengers in the terminal, while he is loading the cases from the carts to the conveyer belts. Those going from the belts to the carts are sometimes tantalising, but of no real use to him.

He touches zippers and handles, sniffing and listening with his fingers. That is how he thinks of it. What his fingers seem to tell him is something other than touch, more like a fading scent and the faintest of echoes. A bouquet and a song, travelling up his arms from his fingertips.

His grandmother, who taught him, would have said that he is sensing the resonances of the souls of the people who own the cases. Scents and voices are the closest analogues he has.

What he is searching for is his mother’s semblance – the fragrance of her hair, the melody of her unremembered voice.

Discarding each case in turn, he lifts them from the baggage cart across to the conveyor belt and moves on to the next. His skims the baggage tags with his eyes, reading the details without really being conscious of doing so.

Ah.

He lifts a case off the cart and kneels beside it on the tarmac. He pauses, holding the zipper between finger and thumb. His other hand rests lightly on the handle, savouring the moment of anticipation.

He unzips the selected case and flips it open. Inside are a woman’s clothes. This one is fastidiously packed, the clothes neatly folded, the limited volume optimally used. Sometimes the contents are messy, clean and dirty jumbled together, packed with more haste than thought.

It is unerringly a woman’s case that he chooses. Reverently, he places his hands flat on top, his skin pimpling as the thrill runs up his arms. He likes to lift up a petticoat or other piece of underwear and hold it to his face, covering his mouth and nose while he breathes. He feels the song and scent of the soul go inside him, filling his lungs.

He searches deeper, finds the toiletries bag and opens it. Inside is what he is looking for. He plucks hairs from the brush, running them under his nostrils before dropping them into the snap-lock bag he retrieves from his pocket.

He repacks the case as he found it, zips it shut and lifts it onto the conveyor belt. He watches it disappear up the tunnel to the baggage carousel.

He wonders what she looks like, the owner of the soul that is so like his mother’s. He has found it is better not to see. Reality inevitably disappoints. Instead, he stands still and enjoys resisting the temptation.

Then he goes back to work.

V.

In hindsight, it seems blindingly obvious that his grandmother should not have taught him voodoo.

‘Voodoo’ is his word for it, not hers.

It was women’s secrets she taught him, not meant for men. But her daughter was dead and her nieces and grandnieces were far away and beyond her reach. He was all she had.

If she was not a lonely old immigrant, if there had been one other woman – any other woman – within reach who knew the tradition, she would not have done it. But she was, and there was not, and she did. And then she died.

He does not properly understand the nature of what she taught him, or see truly what it is that he does.

That does not excuse him.

VI.

You could find the monster seed inside of anyone, easily enough, if you cut them open and if calling it a seed was not just a metaphor.

If the metaphoric seed is fertilised by culture or circumstance, it will flourish.

And the monster will grow, in anyone.

VII.

At the end of his working week, he locks up his tiny bedsit under the flight path and drives home. The journey takes him out past the suburbs, up through the hills and down the other side. Past farmhouses and towns. It is well past sunset when he pulls off the highway and hears the crunch of gravel beneath the tyres. The headlights sweep across the whitewashed walls of the old, deconsecrated church, the garden bursting with flowers and fruit.

He kicks off his shoes in the old vestry, uses one to prop open the door. The voices are muted in the still air, a murmur at the fringes of his thoughts. He leaves the lights off, finding his way by memory and touch. They hang in the high space above him, ready to sing. He unbolts the portico door at the far end and pushes it wide.

Gently, the breeze finds its way inside. Softly, the voices begin to sing. Such sadness they hold, such forlorn and touching bewilderment. He lets the tears run down his cheeks as the chorus washes over him and through.

He turns on the lights and walks around, stroking the pale extremities of bone that hang low enough to reach, stilling the chimes for a minute while he caresses the varnished smoothness, marvelling at his own artistry, how he has carved them, assembled them, hung them just so.

Content, he makes himself sandwiches in the kitchen shoehorned into what had been the church’s south transept. He sits on the battered old couch to eat, in the serene space in the middle of the floor, surrounded by his workshop clutter.

After he has cleaned his plate and cutlery, he sits down at his modelling bench, unwraps the end of the clay block and cuts off a slice. He rolls it into a ball that sits comfortably in his fist, then presses the hair he has harvested that day into the middle of the ball. Then he selects a pin from the jar at the back of the bench, touching each one in turn until he finds the right one for now. He pricks his thumb and squeezes out a drop of blood, then presses it into the hole in the clay that he made for the hair, just the way his grandmother taught him.

Carefully, he shapes the clay into a figurine. He feels a stiffening and tightening inside his pants as he squeezes its breasts into shape, narrows its waist and gives a pleasing curve to its buttocks and thighs. Satisfied at last, he sits back to admire his work, pressing the heel of his hand down onto his crotch.

He takes the new figurine and the pin over to the altar table and lies them side-by-side on the cloth. He trails his fingertips over the doll’s breasts, belly and crotch, imagines that he can sense the tremor in response, even over such a distance, as its owner feels an echo of his touch. Then he goes outside.

He leans his back against the old iron boiler and watches the stars turn across the sky, the night air filled with the heady perfumes of his garden.

In the still hours before dawn, he goes back inside. Again, he caresses the new doll, sensing the sleepy response. He picks up the pin and gently pushes its point through the doll’s chest.

He rests a few hours, then drives the few kilometres into town for groceries. There is a woman who works at the general store who he likes, big-hipped and blousy. The scent and song of her are wrong, but she is friendly and maternal in a way that he likes to imagine reminds him of his mother.

VIII.

Sometimes, his co-workers at the airport observe while he performs his routine at the baggage carts. They mock him, but they never intervene. The men are unthreatened by his eccentric behaviour and the few women are too threatened by the men, should they speak out. Besides, sniffing underwear and stealing a few hairs is not a patch on what some of them do with the luggage.

If most monsters are men, it is because most cultures and circumstances nurture the monstrousness of men.

If most cultures and circumstances nurture the monstrousness of men, it is because most monsters are men.

It is a vicious circle.

IX.

The next time he comes home from work, he goes straight to the altar. His palms are sweating, fingers trembling. The past few days have been almost unbearable, as those in-between days always are. Has he captured the soul?

Carefully, so as not to crack the dried clay, he eases the pin from the doll’s chest. The voice is still there, ever so faint. His pulse thuds. He lifts the doll to his face, brushes the clay with his lips, inhales deeply. He finds what he is seeking, a tantalising facsimile, an almost memory of the scent of his mother’s hair.

He stays awake until dawn, although he is tired, then rests through the day. After sunset, he loads his tools into his van and drives back to the city. He rests the doll between his thighs, feels its voice grow subtly stronger, its pleasing hardness against his erection. Its scent fills his nostrils. It draws him along, through the suburbs, past the bright, empty towers of the city centre, past the airport, veering away, out the other side of the metropolis.

The country road dances and twists in the dark, trying to escape his headlights. His hands are sweaty on the steering wheel. At last he arrives at the cemetery gate. He keeps driving, slowly, following a side road that parallels the iron fence, past a service gate. He pulled over, gets his tool bag out of the back and walks back to the gate. He cuts the chain with his bolt cutters and slips inside.

With the doll in his hand, he hurries past the ugly concrete block of the crematorium, that hateful, wasteful place. He lets the song and scent guide him to the right spot. His excitement spikes when he sees the fresh-piled dirt. He tucks the doll into a pocket, slides his tool bag off his shoulder and extracts his shovel.

He digs at the head of the new grave, making a hole big enough to stand in and work. When he strikes the coffin, he throws the shovel out of the hole and clears the dirt from the lid with his hands. The voice of the soul trapped inside is soft but clear in his mind, mournful and sleepily confused. He uses the sharpened blade of his pick to score across the lid, then takes his mallet and chisel from the bag.

The blows ring painfully loud. He knows that the earth walls deaden any sound that escape from the hole, but he pauses, nonetheless, between each blow and listens a few seconds.

Once the lid is split, he hooks a surgeon’s mask over his ears. The stink of the corpse overwhelms the fragile aura of the soul.

He puts on heavy rubber gloves and levers the coffin open with his crowbar. The stench is like an assault. Holding his breath, he loops his rope around the body’s ribs, under the armpits, then climbs out of the hole. He tries to breathe shallowly until he has hauls the body up and seals it inside the bag. Then he slips back down into the hole, sets the broken piece of lid back in place and climbs back out to refill the grave, evening out the surface as best he can to disguise his intrusion.

He heaves the body in its bag up onto his shoulders, bending awkwardly double to gather up his tools. Crabwise, stooping, huffing with effort, he scuttles back to the gate and out to his van. Not until he is back on the road, leaving undisturbed quiet behind him, does he begin to relax.

X.

This all began with a fetish for sniffing hair, remember.

XI.

He rests when he gets home, toppling onto his bed for a couple of dreamless hours. His alarm wakes him in daylight. He allows himself only a glass of water before he goes back out for the next part of the task.

First, he gets the furnace going underneath the old boiler. Then, donning gloves and mask and averting his gaze as much as he can, he unzips the body from the bag and strips it. The clothes he throws into the furnace.

He stands, opens the top of the boiler and picks up his axe. He closes his eyes for a few breaths, then he starts to chop, tossing each piece into the boiler as soon as it is separated. He aims for the joints – wrists, elbows, shoulders, ankles, knees, neck – trying as much as possible to avoid damaging the long parts of the bones. Separating the thighs from the pelvis and ribs from spine are the hardest. A cut on either side of each thigh and a practiced twist of the axe takes care of the former, placing the axe blade precisely so and judicious application of a mallet does for the latter.

He wishes he could shut his nose to the stink, shut his ears to the jumbled mess it makes of the song. He will make it whole again, he reminds himself, better and purer than it was before, cleansed of its decaying husk of meat.

The doll he tosses through the furnace hatch after the clothes.

Afterwards, he opens both doors and winds out all the high windows of the church to let the chorus swell as loud as possible and the fragrances of the captured souls swirl into every nook. He sits on his couch in the serene space and lets the reconstructed memory of his lost mother wash over him, cleanse him, remind him that it will be worth it, in the end, once this new soul is purified and shaped and perfected and hung in its proper place among the multitude.

He is going to be late for work, but it is more important that he is calm before he sets out than that he be punctual.

The thought of breakfast turns his stomach.

He dresses in his uniform and combs his hair. Before leaving, he looks up at the bare, elegant, ivory shapes, layers and layers of them that fill the vaulted ceiling space, the dozens of souls he has already carved into such sublime harmony.

He pulls the door shut and checks that it is locked. He decides to stop and buy a coffee and sandwiches from the woman at the general store, who he likes to think reminds him of his mother, before he sets out on the long drive back to work. He is tired but content.

XII.

Monsters exist, and they can be dangerous. It all depends where the next leap takes them.

Indiscretions

By Hillary Dodge

During the full pound and punch of her morning run, in the steadily lifting gloom, Mary sees a figure, indistinct and blurry, at the end of the broken street where no one ought to be. She skids to a stop and blinks. The figure is gone.

Most of her neighborhood is undeveloped and has been for some time. There are wide open tracts of weeds, cracked flats of dirt, and animal holes in abundance. There are also three foundations, gaping holes, really, and another with a rotting timber frame above. It is as if the contractors went out for lunch and never returned. Even the For-Sale signs have disappeared, perhaps toppled by wind or kids and eventually buried.

There is nowhere for a person to have gone. She approaches one crumbling basement hole after another. In one she sees the shape of a snake slither into the deep shadows. In another she is impressed by scattered anthills, which make the basement floor resemble the cratered surface of the moon in the early morning half-light. She sees a spider dangling beneath its intricate silvery web. But there is no person. Nor any sign of one.

Something about the foundation with the rotting timbers doesn’t feel right. Its framework is tilted and warped and she is overcome by an inexplicable feeling of grief. She avoids looking at it.

As she retraces her steps through the un-neighborhood, she only counts three rabbits scattering as the sun slips above the horizon. Perhaps they are being scared off or eaten by the dogs she hears howling and fighting at night.

Mary jogs past her house and up the front steps of her next door neighbor’s. Behind the kitsch patchwork flower pot, she retrieves a set of keys tucked inside a false stone. Inside Bev’s house, it is much the same. Cozy countrified décor with As Seen on TV gadgets.

The remote control in its place of honor on the easy chair arm brings to mind better days. Mary closes her eyes for the briefest moment before George, the cat, finds her, slowly inhaling. The cinnamon apple scent of Bev’s decorative candle compulsion, however, is not present. She looks towards the false mantel and sees the three fat red candles sitting mutely in their crystal dishes.

George races up to her and paws at her, stretching himself full up her leg, as if about to jump to her shoulder. Mary leans down to pet the orange long-hair, cooing to him gently. He yowls back, visibly agitated. It is very uncharacteristic of him. Bev, like too many others, is in the hospital. She’s been there for almost a full week. Mary is beginning to get worried about her and wonders for the third time that week if she should go against the old woman’s wishes and just call her son already. But perhaps he is sick as well?

George weaves about her feet anxiously, making nervous guttural noises as she moves towards the kitchen. When she pries open the lid to the dry food canister, Mary is puzzled. Hadn’t it been full the day before? Today, it is almost empty, down to the last cup or three of George’s food. Mary dumps an overflowing scoop into his bowl and decides to add his food to her list for the grocery tomorrow.

She tries to sit with George for a while, stroking his bristling fur to calm him down. But he won’t stay put and keeps moving all over the couch. Besides that, Mary herself feels unsettled. Her thoughts return again and again to the figure she saw in the gloom. There’s no way she imagined it. She isn’t that sort of person. Mary pushes the uncomfortable feeling out of her mind.

There is no newspaper waiting on the driveway when she returns home. Perhaps her husband has already taken it in, although he isn’t typically an early riser. But on going to his room and knocking, she finds it empty, the bed not slept in. Her stomach feels hot and leaden. So, it’s come to this, has it? He’s not even coming home anymore.

Mary grits her teeth and passes by the hall mirror. Out of the corner of her eye she sees her hair. Pausing and stepping backwards, she looks in the mirror. How did it get to be so gray? And her eyes, where the hell did those wrinkles come from? Suddenly she is beyond furious at her husband and what he’s done to her—all the stress he’s put her through. Isn’t it enough with what’s been going on around them? Why does he have to add to it?

Mary stomps into the kitchen, teeth clenched and knuckles white at her sides. She fills the coffee maker and opens the fridge to grab the milk. Only the milk is gone. The sugar, she also discovers, is running low.

With a growl, Mary grabs the notepad and pen off the countertop to begin a grocery list. Milk. Sugar. Cat food. She notices that her hand has begun to shake. What else has her rat of a husband forgotten to tell her about? Mary knows these are small indiscretions in the greater scheme of things. But she is unwilling to forgive him. She pockets the list and takes a deep breath.

Her chest is too tight and Mary tells herself that she has lost any appetite she may have had after her run. She goes to retrieve the step ladder from the pantry but it isn’t there. She finds it in the garage with its step broken. When the hell did that happen?

Using a chair, she retrieves the pills from the cabinet above the fridge. She quickly swallows two of the small round pills with a gulp of coffee. It is hotter than she expects and she drops the bottle, spilling the pills onto the floor. Cursing, she squats to pick them up. There is a brownish stain on the gray tile. Mary rubs at it with a finger but it does not come up. She pops another pill into her mouth and chews it to hold back the tears.

She would like to go somewhere but she had promised her parents and son that she would take a few days off and stay out of the city.

Mary decides to keep busy with chores. She goes into her son’s room to retrieve his laundry and is surprised—almost concerned—to see that he has already washed and folded his own laundry. His boxers and shirts sit in neat stacks on his freshly made bed. His clothes look faded and somehow permanent. She experiences an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Mary is immediately suspicious of something. Does Dylan know about the trouble between her and Michael? Is he perhaps trying to smooth something, anything over to lessen the tension of the house? Mary shakes her head. That’s not like him. Dylan is a typical moody teenager. He would deal by stuffing his head into his headphones and listening to that screaming racket he calls music.

The thought of her son retreating into his music makes her smile and miss him terribly. He’s only an hour or so away at her parents’ house, but today the distance feels too heavy. She reminds herself that it was the right thing to do—sending him away until the danger was past. She also reminds herself that she can simply call him later in the day to hear his voice. She smiles as she pictures him swiping a lock of brown hair out of his eyes—that silly resistance to cutting his hair—and hears his voice cracking innocently in contrast to the bad boy look he sought.

Thinking of the phone call has reminded her of something else and she returns to the kitchen and picks up the phone. She dials her salon and leaves a message requesting an appointment ASAP. It is too early for anyone to be in but Mary finds herself imagining the blinking light of the answering machine and the digital display beside it. In her mind’s eye, she sees the numbers flashing and increasing one by one each day until the machine is full and will no longer accept new messages.

Mary shakes herself out of the morbid daydream. What is wrong with her?

She decides to wash the dishes—much less than she’s used to seeing in the sink—and actually takes the time to soap and rinse them by hand. She sees the bubbles pop, expire and thinks for a moment that she will turn on the TV to see the latest reports. But she almost instantly decides against that. She doesn’t want to know what is happening, how the world is dying.

A sudden thought occurs to her. She can’t have imagined the person. They probably hid in the least stable-looking house precisely because they hoped she wouldn’t look in there. But why would they be hiding? Because they are someone trying to get away from the city and all that chaos. They are someone taking cover from the world and the sickness that is bringing it to its knees.

This means that things are getting worse. Worse than she suspected it would get. And so soon. It is barely three weeks since the first confirmed cases. Isn’t it? Her timeline is fuzzy.

If the person is hiding, then they are scared. It isn’t likely that they are dangerous, Mary concludes. She makes up her mind to bring them some canned food. She grabs a can of Italian Wedding soup—the kind with a pop-lid for easy opening. She’s never cared for the stuff but her husband loves it. Well, he can just go buy more if he wants it that bad. She also takes a bottle of water and a half-eaten box of crackers. She stuffs these things inside a plastic grocery bag.

Outside the sun burns the world pale. The asphalt looks bleached like a dead thing stretched out on a beach. Weeds split through the dirt-filled cracks and even they look to be more a shade of gray than green.

A distant rumbling draws her attention as Mary walks towards the unfinished neighborhood. She stops and turns towards the noise. It is a truck, shifting and accelerating somewhere out on the highway. Mary is startled to realize that she hasn’t heard a single vehicle all day. The sound of its diesel engine reverberates through the empty air as the truck draws near, passes close, and then coasts away. Mary imagines the world beyond her quiet neighborhood as if it were a vast ocean, only passable now and then in great churning, thundering vessels.

When the sound of the truck is lost to her ears, Mary continues down the street.

The contractors got as far as the sidewalks and the required utility connections. She stands at the curb in front of the half-made house and watches its openings closely. There is no movement of any kind.

The house doesn’t quite have a front or sides for that matter. It is a skeleton of a house with timber ribs protruding from the sagging plywood subfloor. There isn’t even a roof. Mary can see into the house and right through it. There is no one inside. But there is a basement that is mostly covered over and protected from the elements.

Mary mounts the ramp that stretches from the ground in front to the gaping doorway. She shifts her weight carefully and enters the house.

“Hello?” she calls, lilting her voice as if it is a question.

No one replies.

Mary moves towards the mostly enclosed cave that is the opening to the basement. Simple wooden treads lead down into the gloom. A smell wafts up and Mary immediately places it from her childhood on the farm. Sweet and dry, unmistakably putrid and yet also, aged somehow, lessened over time. It is the smell of the decaying cow she stumbled upon one summer, far out in the west field. What was left was mostly a desiccated rind, the maggots having moved on long ago.

Mary descends.

The basement isn’t really that dark. She can see well enough thanks to the window wells and an unfinished or collapsed part of the floor above. She skirts the hole and the pile of debris beneath.

Behind the stairs, she finds the person. He is huddled in the corner farthest from the light, bent double, curled up as a child might do when they are frightened of the monster under their bed. The man is wearing a navy sports coat and dark jeans. There is a dried stain on the concrete beneath and around him. He is as still as the dead.

Mary sets the bag of food onto the floor and lets out a shaking breath. She cannot see any part of the person, only his clothes. But the clothes sag as if the figure beneath has shrunken. The jacket is spotted and discolored.

How long has this guy been here? And how long was he dying alone in the dark?

Beside the person rests a rusting hand trowel. An arm partially extends from the huddled body towards the trowel as if it was important to them somehow. The hand is out of sight within the sleeve, a trivial mercy for which Mary is grateful. She leaves the bag of food and ascends back into the daylight.

Mary strips her clothes off in the garage and tilts open the trash can to dispose of them. There are already several sets of t-shirts and pants wadded inside. She pauses, her arm holding her clothes in midair above the open can. She knows those clothes because they are hers. But what are they doing in the trash? Did her husband do it? Did he come home while she was out? Did he walk his usual route from the train station, whistling and snapping, while planning to pop inside her closet and throw out all her clothes?

Mary drops her clothes inside and slams the lid. She bounds up the three steps into the house, fury giving her speed. She doesn’t care that she’s naked.

“Michael!”

There is no reply. She waits a breath or two before plodding into the house. He isn’t there.

Mary returns to the kitchen where her bottle of pills still sits on the counter. She twists open the lid and pops another pill into her mouth. She is shaking again and her breathing feels strained. She imagines spores lifting off the dead person’s jacket to dance with the dust in the light from the window wells. She remembers her sigh and deep inhalation when she discovered that the man was dead—long dead.

Mary decides she will ask Michael about the clothes when he shows up. But at this moment, she wants nothing more than a scalding hot shower.

Under the spray of the showerhead, Mary discovers a wound on her head. It is roughly half an inch above her right ear, buried in her hair. She found it while sliding her fingers through her hair when applying shampoo. Frowning, she traces her slippery fingers over the ridge, feeling its shape and testing for tenderness.

Sliding open the shower door, Mary steps onto the bath mat and turns her head to look at the wound in the mirror. She can only see a part of it but from what she can see, it looks like an old wound, already pinked into scar tissue.

Mary returns to the shower puzzled. She can’t remember any injury that might have caused that. She is filled with uncertainties and squeezes her eyes shut, thrusting her face beneath the spray. She backs into the tile and leans there, inhaling the lavender scent of her body wash, a washcloth draped over her face, blocking the steam and light. She practices deep breathing and the mental mantras she’s been taught to use.

She is feeling more frazzled and uncertain as the day peaks and dips towards afternoon. She has begun to manifest her old habits of lip chewing and fingertip counting. Her lips hurt and she tastes blood. Her fingers begin to feel fatigued from touching edges and corners.

Mary brews a cup of Sleepytime tea, the mint and lemongrass to help calm her nerves. She settles onto the worn denim couch to read. She picks a book off the coffee table, a classic she’s always wanted to read but never got around to starting. She fights hard to stay focused, to keep her mind from wandering and wondering. The characters chase each other across various probabilities and imagined insults. Although she’s never read it, the story seems too familiar and after an hour or so, Mary gives up.

She is just drifting off into the blank void of sleep when the screen door slams. Instantly, she is on her feet, heat beating, her brain bleary.

“Michael? Are you finally home?” she calls out.

Silence. She is getting tired of this routine she’s developed. Her calling out, questioning the air, never to be answered.

Mary steps into the hall and looks towards the front door just in time to see a figure pass in front of the screen. She immediately recognizes the blue sports jacket with the mottled stains. The inconsistencies and mysteries of the day come crashing back on her in an instant and for a moment, Mary is paralyzed, struck with a horror so primal she can hardly breathe.

But then she is angry and she stomps down the hall and shoves open the screen.

Her yard is empty but there is a sudden crash from the garage. The door is wide open but she’s sure she left it closed. Mary lets the screen door slam shut behind her as she takes the front steps two at a time. She turns into the garage.

It is also empty. But there is movement. A cabinet swings lazily open as if someone just pushed the door closed, not allowing the latch to catch before rushing out. Mary approaches the work bench and the cabinet above. Michael, being the tinker and fiddler that he was, always kept his tables and cabinets in perfect order. For each tool there was a place and for each place, there was a tool.

Except that on the backside of the cabinet door, Mary sees a tool is missing. The shape is familiar, cylindrical at the top and scoop-shaped at the bottom. A place where a trowel might live.

Mary doesn’t pause to think this through. She is out the door and running across the street towards the half-house in the unfinished neighborhood, swirling and remote memories of days just like this one opening up inside her mind.

In the basement again, she watches the corpse for any sign of movement. She is sure that this is the same figure from this morning. She is so confused, she doesn’t even know the right questions to ask the air.

Fearing contagion, she pulls her sleeve over her hand as she squats down beside it. With a quick, fearful movement, she prods the body. It is long, long dead. Of that, she is certain. Part of it is stuck to the floor and when she exerts a little more force to get it to roll over, a piece of it tears away and remains tacked firmly to the concrete. Mary feels the acid burn of bile rising in the back of her throat. The face is unrecognizable. It is collapsed in on itself, skin folded over and shrunken.

She doesn’t look at it for long because something else has caught her attention. In the dead thing’s hand is a crumpled paper and beneath the body is a small hole where a pump might have been placed eventually. It appears that the person was digging something out of the hole when they died.

Mary reaches across the space between herself and the corpse and tugs a mud-caked Ziploc bag out of the hole. Inside is a gun and a stack of twenty-dollar bills—probably a thousand dollars. Holding her breath, she takes the crumpled paper from the withered hand.

As she carefully unfolds it, a terrible premonition washes over her; with a sinking feeling she recognizes her husband’s handwriting. A glance at the hand confirms that the corpse is who she thinks it is; the gold band she gave to him sixteen years ago glints from the second finger from the left.

In silence, she reads his words. She reads them over and over, her breath held tight and hard in her chest. He must have been sick and came here to retrieve what he’d hidden for the worst-case scenario—if one of them was left alone.

She can’t know what has happened to her son and her parents. But she does know that this man—this man she both loved and hated—is no longer with her or anyone else. Despite his infidelity and their rapidly deteriorating relationship, he had still been trying to reach her. His letter of apology and love, clutched tight in his dying fist, declared more than he himself was able to show or say for the last year of their relationship.

She does not know how long ago that was. In a flash, she recalls the broken step stool and the brown stain on the kitchen floor. She feels the raised scar on her head through the coarseness of her gray hair. How many times has she been down in this basement with the corpse of her husband? How many days has she gone out running every morning thinking it was Sunday all over again?

Mary presses her husband’s letter to her forehead and weeps. The tears roll down her cheeks and her air is compressed inside her lungs, wanting to burst out, but held there by her misery. Her fingers are shaking and she is silently crying as she tucks the letter back inside his hand and drops the Ziploc back into the hole. She rolls him gently over and stands.

When she returns to the house, all she wants to do is go to sleep. But first, she must visit her son’s room.

It is just the way she left it on that last day. How long ago could that have been? She tries to remember through the fog of the past days, weeks…months. She’s sure she must have gone into his room and picked up the laundry scattered on the floor, like she always did after her morning run. She knows also, that she probably washed them, folded them, and sat them on his bed, waiting for him to return.

And there they are. Mary notes how faded the clothes have become. Weeks, then. There is dust on his pillow and Mary furiously plucks it from the bed and holds it up under her nose. His smell is already gone. Months.

She squeezes the pillow as she fights back the tears. He never came home.

She curls her hand into a fist and pounds her temple, where the scar is still pink. If she hadn’t been injured, could she have… she cannot finish the thought. It is too horrible.

In her room, her bed waits. There is nothing she can do but kick off her shoes and crawl beneath the cold sheets. She is so tired. Too tired to do anything that might make tomorrow a different day. Her sobs are silent and her grief curls her body in on itself.

In the morning, Mary rises and stretches. She wonders briefly how she could have possibly fallen asleep in her clothes. Lacing up her running shoes, she remembers with both anticipation and dread that next week her son will return from her parent’s house. Although she misses her son beyond her understanding, she hates knowing she will have to return to the charade of living with a husband, a father who no longer cares.